


Kappa and Lamia

by This_world_of_beautiful_monsters



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW Comics), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Brainwashing, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat (I think I'm using that right), Discussion of Abortion, Discussions of Suicide, F/F, F/M, Foot Turtles, Graphic descriptions of violence, I don't think the 2012 turtles are biologically related to Splinter, M/M, Master/Pet, Mechanical Rape, Mind Break, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Mutilation, No beta we die like Shredder (many times), No end or beginning, Non-Consensual Bondage, Non-Consensual Drug Use, People Eating, Self-Consumption, So I guess its not incest but its fanfic so who cares?, Tail Sex, Torture, Touch of Vore, maybe size kink?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:08:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 28
Words: 85,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27219145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/This_world_of_beautiful_monsters/pseuds/This_world_of_beautiful_monsters
Summary: Leorai stories, because that ship is a gloriously hypnotic trash fire and will remain so until the end of time.
Relationships: Alopex/Shinigami, April O'Neil/Shinigami (TMNT), Casey Jones/Raphael (TMNT), Donatello/April O'Neil (TMNT), Donatello/Casey Jones (TMNT), Karai & Leonardo (TMNT), Karai/Leonardo (TMNT), Karai/Leonardo/Raphael (TMNT), Karai/Leonardo/Shinigami (TMNT), Karai/Shinigami (TMNT), Karai/Shredder (TMNT), Leatherhead/Michelangelo (TMNT), Leonardo/Tiger Claw (TMNT), Michelangelo/Mondo Gecko (TMNT), Non-Consensual Pairings, Raphael/Spike | Slash (TMNT)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 61





	1. Vengeance Is Ours

"Let me help," Leo says, and for a few seconds all Karai can do is stare at him. At first, she wants to laugh, and then she wants to knock him out so she can go butcher Shredder on her own.

The idea is complete ridiculous. At best he'll get in her way and at worst he'll try to stop her from administering the final blow out of some confused sense of "justice." After all, what does a boy who was literally raised underground know about how the real world works?

Except...

Except there's something about him, something that keeps him from melting into the blurry green lens through which she usually sees his brothers. Not a "certain sparkle" or any of that bullshit; she had such sentimental notions beaten out of her long ago. This is something different, something darker.

It's in the way his eyes light up when he's just won a fight, as stoic as he tries to look, like deep down he relishes his opponent's pain and fear. It's in the dead expression he had when he was firing an RPG at the Shredder, as if he was completing a somewhat nasty chore. It's in the fact that as much as the red one blusters, she knows deep down that if any one is ever expected to do the dirty work in their family it'll be Leo.

He has the look of someone who's been painstakingly, painfully carved into a living weapon. She recognizes that look, because she sees it in her mirror every day. Sure, maybe she was designed to dominate and he was designed to protect, but what differences does that really make in the end?

She knows that Shredder is supposed to be the "bad" one, and Splinter is supposed to be "good." In Karai's experience, however, good and bad are bedtime stories for infants. Fathers are fathers, and a father is someone who puts a blade in your hand and pushes you to your limits until you can take down an army with it.

If there are different examples, she won't get to experience them. And neither, she thinks, will Leo.

Karai's never loved anyone--her affection for her father was always tempered with fear and pain, while her mother has always been little more than a photograph on the wall that her father spent a lot of time screaming about. Leo loves his brothers (maybe his father, too, she doesn't think even he knows for sure) with a burning passion that Karai will never understand. And that makes him a thousand times more dangerous than she'll ever be.

So, she decides to use that danger. And...and maybe taste a little of that love.

All this passes through her mind in a heartbeat, and then she's stepping forward, into his personal space. "Will you finish him?" she asks. She speaks in Japanese, the language that her ancestors used while preparing to burn regimes to the ground. "Will you drag the entrails out of his body as he shits himself and begs for mercy? Will you stand and watch him bleed out, for however long it takes?"

He doesn't flinch when he replies, in the same tongue, "Always."

They kiss, and he tastes so much sweeter than all the fat old men the Shredder had her seduce back In Japan. Still, she knows it won't last. The things that draw them together--iron wills, bloodlust, a need for control--will ultimately tear them apart.

She supposes that the clan warfare will start up again somewhere in the future. Perhaps he'll kill her, perhaps she'll kill him, perhaps they'll die in each other's arms like a vastly improved version of Romeo and Juliet.

But growing up in the Foot Clan, with Shredder's claws always hovering over the back of her neck, has made death an old friend. She suspects that growing up underneath of a city full of people who would (for the most part) kill him on sight has had a similar effect on Leo.

The two of them will take every year, every day, every second they have for the gift it is. And in the meantime, she will get some sweet revenge.

They break apart, and go out hunting together.


	2. When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leo may or may not be alone in his coma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Partially inspired by fan art from tmntforever@tumblr.com. Formerly titled "Real Or Not Real," current title taken from the lyrics of Billie Eilish's song "Bury A Friend."

"So you're in a coma right now? That's pretty sick." Karai raises her arms as she walks along the roof's edge, skirt fluttering in the breeze.

Walking alongside her, Leo raises an eyebrow. "'Sick'?" Really?"

"Hey, astral projection, remember? No filter." She lifts up on her toes, smiling as the sun caresses her face. No matter how hard the wind blows her dress, Leo can't ever make out her feet. He thinks maybe he should be bothered by that, the same way he should be bothered by the total silence of the city beneath them or the fact that it's broad daylight, but none of this is actually happening so why should he care?

He rolls his eyes. "Well, anyway, 'sick' is not the word I would use. More like 'in a state of total uselessness and probably stuffed full of homemade tubes'." A few flakes of snow drift down from the cloudless sky and Leo hugs himself, shivering at bad memories and worse fears for the future.

There's a vague feeling that his father's spirit should be somewhere around here, although he's not sure why, but so far it's just him and Karai. The sunlight flashes in her hair, turning it ebony and gold in a way he'd never thought he'd see.

That light flickers as she shrugs. "Yeah, that too, I guess."

Karai waves a dismissive hand out over the cityscape. "I'm somewhere down there, in what should a Kraang-infested hellpit, rolling around in my own shit and probably feeding off corpses." She points a finger gun at her own head and mimes pulling the trigger. "I wasn't doing too good before I fell in that fucking tank, and getting turned into a Slytherin mascot pretty much blew me off the deep end."

He winces at the reminder. "I'm sorry."

She shrugs. "Don't be. There's something kind of...liberating about going batshit crazy, you know? I can see why my ex-daddy dearest likes it so much. Of course, I do think I'm going to go back eventually, and once I do I'll have to eat his liver while he's still breathing out of principle, but that's neither here nor there."

They leap over a street, and after reaching the other end Karai says "So...on to the elephant on the psychic plane, any idea what's with the new outfits?"

Leo looks down at his sweeping cloak and quiver of arrows, blushing under his hood. He blushes even harder when she adds "Not to complain or anything; I think we both look pretty sexy."

"Um...." Leo adjusts his bow. "If Donnie were here, he might say that they're like, projections of our id?"

Karai cocks her head. "Sounds like weird sci-fi bullshit, but so does most of our lives at this point. So what do you think your id is trying to tell you?"

He thinks about his reply, and because this isn't the physical world his thoughts immediately come tumbling out of his mouth. "I don't know. I mean, I think the," the building rattles slightly underneath them, "the Shredder d-damaged my legs and spine, just a little bit-I think. So...so maybe this is my subconscious is trying to tell me to get used to being an archer, or generally just someone who has to use projectile weapons. And the cloak is me trying to, I don't know, conceal myself from further harm?"

She nods. "Or maybe you just had a Lord of the Rings obsession as a kid and this is a result." He very much doubts that, but he's grateful to her for saying it.

She hums thoughtfully, looking herself up and down. Karai's hair plunges unbound to her waist, and a sword glimmers on her back. She's wearing a silvery purple dress, embroidered with swirling patterns of white skulls and blood red roses. "Well, this is a heck of a time to embrace my inner femininity," she mutters. "Right after I literally lost my boobs."

He laughs, even though the comment's not that funny, and she joins in. They cackle together in the emptiness, the semi-hysterical giggles of people who have to laugh because the only other option is to cry until they can't breathe.

"Seriously, though," she says finally. "This could be a half-assed attempt to connect with my mother. I mean, almost every thought I've ever had about her was bullshit, so maybe this is how my psyche tried to cope?" She brushed a hand over one of the skulls. "The death stuff, though..." she murmurs, a little sadly, "...that's all me."

Leo nods sadly, because 'death stuff' isn't nearly as fun when it's not a choice. "Me, too," he murmurs.

They continue together in silence, moving together through an endless, empty city. After a long time he finally brings up the courage to wonder, "How long are you going to stay?"

"No idea. Like I said, there's not much waiting for me down there, and my body seems to be handling itself just fine on its own. I guess..." She idly twirls a strand of hair around her finger, and for a split second her hand has teeth. "I guess I'll stay as long as I have to talk to."

Leo looks at his feet, which have been reduced to green blurs by the folds of his cloak. "I don't know if I'll wake up," he admits quietly.

Karai nods. "That's reasonable. Tell me, if you had an option between going back or staying here, which would you choose?"

He jerks to a stop and stays at her. "What?! How can you have ask that? You think I want to remain in a bathtub for the rest of my life? Besides, I have family, people who rely on me, people I _love_. I can't just abandon them!"

She turns to look at him with a shrug. "I'll tell you from experience that you can abandon anything, although I admit that you, personally, probably don't have a good reason to do so. Yet."

"Besides..." Leo stares into her eyes, which are now glowing the fierce, light green of mutagen. "I don't even know if this is real. Maybe I'm actually talking to some projection of you, or maybe this all happening in my own head."

Karai studies him for a few seconds, before leaning forward to plant a kiss on his lips. He kisses back, but when she pulls away with a satisfied smirk he finds his mouth hanging open. "Did that feel real?" she asks.

His head is spinning, but he manages to say "I-I wouldn't know. I've never had one before."

She nods. "Well, it felt real to me. Of course, real or not real, I doubt either of us is going to remember this little chat the next time we see each other. Plus, knowing the total wreck my physical brain is right now, I'm probably going to run from you. And knowing you, you'll probably be running after me. So..."

Karai turns away and drops to a running stance, hair rippling in the breeze like a flag. "You're going have to get used to chasing me down."

He raises an eyebrow. "And what do I get if I catch you?"

She shoots him a look over her shoulder, face light in a way he doesn't remember physical-reality Karai's ever being. "Whatever I give, and whatever you want to take. This is a dream, remember? We left all the rules behind, back in the dirty little world."

Before he can reply, she's off like a bullet, and he's pounding on her heels. The clothes that should restrict their movements instead propel them forward like wings.

She's crazy, and he's broken, and those things will always stay the same in one way or another. But at least he doesn't have to be alone in the dark.


	3. Crazy Looks Good On You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leo and Karai meet during her brainwashed rampage, and everything goes wrong (or right).

"Why are you doing this?" Leo asks, staggering out of range.

The fight's pretty much over at this point, so Karai's able to pause and study him as she thinks. He used that annoying mantra to heal from her poison, but the effort took a lot out of him and blood loss from his many cuts and bites isn't helping matters. He's given as good as he's got--Karai is covered with her own sticky, painful injuries--but the brain worm helps her ignore them.

For a moment they stand there in silence, the sounds of fighting warped and muffled in the distance. His eyes have a kind of desperate hope that she's finding depressingly familiar by this point.

Finally, she speaks. "I don't know," she says simply.

Leo almost drops his remaining sword. "You--you _don't know?_ " he gasps out, voice tinged with an edge of hysterical laughter. "You've been on a homicidal rampage and you don't _know_ why? Shredder didn't give you a narrative or anything?"

Karai shrugs. "I think he said something about mothers and fathers, but I wasn't really paying attention. I just needed something to do."

It's true. Boredom and interest are her primary emotions since the worm's installation, except for the bouts of homicidal rage she mysteriously feels in the presence of the rat. She's actually been avoiding him because of that, in one of many small ways she's been rebelling against Shredder's control.

She doesn't want it _gone_ though. Not really. Everything before the worm feels lonely and painful, but now...now it's like the air is clear for the first time in forever.

Leo blinks at her. "You know," he says slowly, "If you aren't putting me on about needing something to do, why don't just go after the Shredder? That'd keep you entertained for a while, I'd bet." 

Karai knows he's trying to fuck with her head out of sheer desperation, but she still finds herself nodding thoughtfully. "That's right," she muses. "Maybe I'll look into that after I'm through with you."

He grits his teeth and lunges. She's almost startled by that--almost, if she hadn't heard his breathing change with hearing that's grown a hundred time more sensitive since her transformation. Their blades clash, and she's surprised to feel almost...relaxed by their combat. A lot of that probably has to do with the fact that she knows he doesn't actually want to kill her, but...still.

She manages to sweep the last blade out of Leo's hands, losing her own sword in the process. He spins, fists raised--and is met with the two sets of teeth sprouting from Karai's hands. She's been pushing herself since their last encounter, learning what this new body can do, and so far she hasn't been disappointed.

For a moment he stares at her, panting, before dropping his arms to his sides with a groan. "Well?" he asks, sounding defeated, even though his heart rate is still high and she can see his fingers lingering by a belt pouch. "Do it."

Karai cocks her head, but doesn't move. Then she says, "You smell different."

He blinks at her, whatever last-ditch plan he's cooking up temporarily forgotten. "What?"

"From the others," she explains. "You're...sweeter. Less human." He wrinkles his nose at her, like she can chop off his head if she wants, but how _dare_ she insult him in the process.

She rolls her eyes. "It's not an insult. Trust me, I've been human and you're not missing out on anything." Being a mutant brings its own vulnerabilities, but at least it's easier to get away with eating people who piss her off.

Leo frowns. "So, do you want to kill me because I smell good?"

"Of course not. Dead things don't smell as good as live ones," Karai explains slowly, as if speaking to a child.

His breath tenses, like he's about to go for the smoke bomb or whatever that's in his belt, and Karai decides to bring out a surprise of her own. She reaches into a pocket of her uniform and plucks out a brain worm. "Like what you see?" she asks.

Leo's face stutters for a minute, before yanking out a knife--one of her own, she realizes--but instead of throwing at her he presses it to his own throat.

Karai rolls her eyes. "Oh, don't be so dramatic." She twirls the worm around her fingers, petting its spiky little head. "Shredder didn't even want me to bring this, you know. I picked it out all on my lonesome, like a big girl."

She holds it out for him to see, admiring the way the worm's silvery scales flicker and change in the dim light. "His name's Frederick, and he wants to say hello."

A crimson droplet rolls down Leo's throat as he presses against the far wall, staring at her fixedly. His jaw works, as if he's trying to think of something to say--or to hold back a scream.

"Don't you know it's rude not to say hello? You're making Frederick very sad, Leo."

He's taking deep breaths, trying to calm himself, as more blood trickles down his chest.

Before he can fall asleep or accidentally sever his vocal cords, Karai asks, "Do you want to die?" Her voice is soft and serious, all mockery gone.

He can't reply, but she already knows the answer. He's tasted death before, too many times, and Karai had enough near-fatal experiences of her own during the Kraang occupation to understand that such things just make you want to hold on to life all the more.

He's not supposed to live, of course. He's supposed to sacrifice himself for the mission, do whatever it takes to keep his family safe.

But Karai knows as well as anyone that _supposed_ _to_ just isn't one of those phrases that fits into the real world, much like _fair play_ or _sanitary street food._

She waits for him to make his decision, occupying herself by having the snake heads on her arms play-fight each other.

His breath changes just before he flings the knife at her head. It's a good throw, meant to kill, unlike most of his actions so far. One of her snake heads snap around the hilt when the point is mere inches from her face, and she smiles at the memory of flinging this same knife at him.

"What goes around comes around," she murmurs to herself, and her legs snap into a tail that sends her hurtling across the floor at blinding speed.

Leo actually manages to hit her a few times before she takes him down, bundling him up in a scaly straitjacket and pulling his head into her lap area. She can taste his fear, his illicit excitement at being so close to her, his confusion where those two emotions meet. His big blue eyes peer up at her, upside down, and only grow bigger when she tugs off his mask.

"Please," he gasps out, his voice a low hiss as his muscles tense and flex. "You don't have to do this. You can get around Shredder's control; I know you can, you said it yourself--"

Karai nods. "I can," she admits, dropping Frederick onto his chest. "I just don't want to."

He tries to squirm away, and she traps his head between her palms. "Breathe," she reminds him, tracing circles over his cheekbones with her thumbs. "It's okay."

"Bullshit," he growls, as Frederick curves into the hollow of his throat.

She doesn't reply, just keeps rubbing his face while the worm jabs sharp claws into his skin.

His screaming hurts her sensitive ears, so she clamps his jaw shut for that part. She watches his eyes flash blue-white, blue-white, in a hypnotic light show. His feet drum wildly on the floor, creating a beat that Karai finds herself humming along to.

Once it's clear that white has won out, she shifts back to human and watches Leo gingerly lever himself to his feet. He rubs his temples, blinking. "My head hurts," he says stiffly.

"There's some Advil at the base," Karai replies, already heading out the door. She doesn't have to look back to know he'll follow.

He only stops, a little while later, placing a hand on his face with a concerned expression. "My mask," he says, like he's not sure whether it's a statement or a question.

"Forget it," she replies absentmindedly, taking his hand. "We'll make you another."


	4. None Of This Is Normal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leo reflects on his relationship with Karai during and after his time in the Foot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not technically Leorai (I honestly don't think their IDW incarnations are straight, although I doubt we'll ever get that confirmed and I just have to dearly hope it won't get denied) but it had to go somewhere.

A few days after Leo dons his black mask and faces the rat for the first time, a mission goes wrong. He doesn't know the specifics, but he knows that Karai is the one being blamed.

He stands besides the Shredder's throne, listening as the human orders Karai to get up and approach. He makes her stand there for a few seconds, letting her hands shake every so slightly, before slapping her across the face once, twice, three times.

Leo can't help flinching at the sight, although he doesn't know why. He grew up with Splinter; shouldn't he should be used to masters smacking around their subordinates by now? The rat literally dangled him off a _roof_ , after all (and then there were his brothers, but he will not think of them, he will not cry here). Compared to him, Shredder's behavior should be about as startling as a pat on the head.

Still, there's something in him that stirs at the sight of Karai's bruised face and the tear that she just barely manages to blink away as she moves to her proper place. Her jaw is rigid, her back straight and proud as she glares at the assembled Foot soldiers, daring anyone to bring up this humiliation later on. The look reminds him of

_(a younger boy with short black hair and a filthy red shirt, embarrassed at himself for tripping on the muddy forest floor. He kneels in front of his little brother, dabbing at his bruised face in awkward silence while ___ tries to pretend that it doesn't hurt)_

Leo shoves the memory down with all his dark, painful thoughts, and tries to convince himself he doesn't care. He's supposed to hate Karai, and a lot of the time he does--for her endless bitter jabs, for that barely hidden contempt in which she seems to hold mutants, for the way she _chuckled_ to herself after catching him sniffling over his brothers in the washroom.

The sight of her bruised, face, however, stirs a different instinct in him. There's a faint desire to help, to _protect_ , one that he thought he'd never feel again ~~after fire and blood and endless screaming in the back of his skull~~.

So, to his surprise as much as anyone's, he finds himself approaching Karai after the meeting with an icepack in hand. He holds it out carefully, not sure what to say.

She takes it slowly, looking down at it and up at him. They regard each other in silence.

Then she flings it back at his face with a tremendous amount of force, a move he must have expected deep down because his hand blurs to catch it right before it gives him a black eye. Karai spits something at him about "how you dare you mock me you insignificant blah blah blah," using those clipped, formal speaking patterns that he's starting to suspect might be a bit of a put-on, before stalking away.

He knows the encounter should make it him mad, but for some reason it stirs up a bizarre feeling of fondness instead. Her anger reminds him of clenched emerald fists and bright, fierce eyes glaring at him through a crimson mask.

(Those memories spiral into an image of a strong jaw quivering, trying to be brave until the end, before it's swallowed by a white-hot inferno from the rat-monster's cackling mouth.

So then of course he has to go train until his knuckles bleed and the tears stop soaking his mask.

Which sucks).

Later, after the narrative Kitsune for built him splits into a thousand razor-sharp pieces that shred his brain, Leo hates Karai. He hates everyone, really.

He finds himself drowning in dark, lurid fantasies of hurting her and Kitsune and Shredder in a million creative ways. When he emerges, all he can do is cower under the weight of his self-loathing and fear.

Leo doesn't mention these things to anyone, not his still-alive brothers (especially since their aliveness is in constant jeopardy) or his not-evil father (especially since the "evil" situation is becoming rapidly more confusing with each passing day).

But after a lot of time and meditation, not to mention several meltdowns that he has varying success in concealing, his feelings start to change. The thought of Kitsune or Shredder still makes his blood boil, but Karai...

For one thing, her cruel little comments, her refusal to fall in with the new way of things, kept him from completely losing himself in his role as Oroku Saki's _chunin_. He knows very well that wasn't her intention; nonetheless, she managed to keep him just off-balance for Tang Shen and Raph to do the rest. For that, he probably owes her some strange form of gratitude.

Of course Shredder's first return was partially her fault, but in the end she did seem to realize what kind of monster she brought back from the dead, in her own distorted way. He wonders how much time she had to spend pushing her dark thoughts and fears about the Shredder down, rationalizing the ways he hurt and belittled her.

Leo knows from experience that hiding bad thoughts only lets them fester inside you.

He also understands Karai's desire to resurrect ninjitsu's past in the form of the Shredder. The past often seems so much more simpler to him: a time when right and wrong were clear to anyone with eyes, when people at least tried to understand the concept of honor. He _knows_ this is bullshit, he's lived the past in all its filth and confusion...but he still understands.

So when she offers him a truce in the woods outside of Northampton, he ignores his first instinct to spit in her ete. The cut from Koya's talons is still drying on his face, a mark that will later discover is permanent. Still, the falcon managed to collect herself just enough not to tear out his throat, which he honestly didn't think she was capable of.

It's not a reminder "that anyone can change," or some garbage like that. It's more like a warning about the dangers of falling into a cycle of violence, and a reminder that such cycles are possible to escape. He looks into Karai's calm and thinks of bruised cheeks and burning brothers, his father's stone-cold eyes and the streets of New York littered with dead Triceratrons. Leo's tired of living like that.

So he extends his hand again, and this time she accepts. They make a silent promise to each other--not to forget the past, but to refuse to let it eat them alive the way it did Shredder and Splinter.

Leo watches Karai walk away, holding hands with a tattooed girl who looks at her like she's the center of the world, and wishes the other leader well. He hopes that they can be better than the previous generation. He hopes for a sane ending to the winding, bloody stories of their two clans. He hopes for peace in their lifetimes.

He hopes.

(And when all those hopes go to shit there's a part of him, deep down, that's not really surprised).


	5. It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leo is not alone on the roof when the mutagen bomb falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title based on the song by REM.

Karai's standing in a heap of her enemies' bodies when she hears the ear-splitting whine of the mutagen bombs preparing to go off. She turns, ready to shout a warning, just in time to see Leo shove his brothers off the roof.

He does this, instead of seeking safety like a normal person, because he is an idiot. Karai knows this fact deep in the core of her soul, has known it for almost as long she's known.

She is so busy thinking about what an idiot Leo is that she barely notices when her body decides to hurl itself at him, shifting form in mid leap so that Leo is pinned against the concrete by a rapidly expanding mass of snake.

Karai moves faster than she ever has, wrapping him up in her coils until every skin of leaf-green skin is covered, smothered, protected by layers of hard scale. She sticks her head between his chest and her own coils, feeling his bounding heartbeat boom through her skull. He whimpers under her, struggling feebly, but she just holds tighter as the green light engulfs them both.

Blazing heat singes Karai's genes, and she wonders why in the fresh fuck she did what she just did. She's never been that sappy "sacrifice yourself for your man" type, not that Leo is her "man" in any real sense of the world. She should be getting under cover, letting her Foot soldiers protect her with _their_ bodies as they most certainly would.

Why is she even here? Why would she amass her forces to help this wriggling idiot and his friends fend off yet another goddamn alien invasion rather than seek cover? Because Leo asked, because April glared, because Mikey pouted? What the fuck is her problem?

Maybe, Karai thinks as she tumbles into darkness, she is also an idiot.

"Karai."

She wiggles away from that name, from the voice grating on her sensitive ears. Everything hurts--her head, her stomach, her _teeth_. It's like a full-body hangover, the kind that she only experienced a few times when she was fourteen and desperately trying the endless stress of life as Shredder's daughter, by any means necessary.

"Karai."

The name means so many things to her, some good and some bad. Soldier, killer, leader, heiress, queen. Object of desire, object of hate, object of love. Sister to a witch, daughter to a rat, weapon of a demon. She doesn't want to think of any of it right now.

"Karai!"

"Fucking what?!" she screams, sitting up and ready to shred whoever dares to interrupt her slum--

 _Ah_.

They are on a roof, a roof littered with still-smoking robots and deep cracks in the stone. The night around them rings with the roar of crackling flames and the agonized screams that she recognizes as that of the freshly mutated, accompanied by a symphony of cracking bones and tearing flesh. Apparently, some people are not adjusting to the end of human life as we know it with sophisticated finesse.

Not that matters right now, because right now Leo is sitting by her side, peering at her with a familiar expression of concern in his big blue eyes. And that's the _only_ thing that's familiar about him, because there are two massive triangular ears poking up on either side of his head and his face is pushed forward into some sort of _muzzle_ and he. Is. Covered. In. Fur.

In fact, it's a type and pattern of fur that she believes is called _tortoiseshell._

"Well," she says into the ensuing awkward silence, watching the wind ruffle his fur. "You were always one to take after Splinter."

Then she hears a _hiss_ and her heart stops. Slowly, not wanting to look him in the eye, she looks down at herself.

First she sees the tail. It's thicker than she remembers and bulging with muscles, beginning just beneath her breasts before extending to wind around them both. It flashes in in a breathtakingly unsubtle kaleidoscope of different-colored scales, twitching and wiggling without any input from her. Her skin--what's left of it--is a dead, snowy white.

When she moves her head to get a better look, she sees a ribbon of hair slipping over her shoulder. It's longer than it should be and it's _silver_ , shining with a texture that looks--and feels--almost metallic. Her jaw drops open, and she can feel fangs click together.

Then she sees her right arm. Or, rather, the twisting, dancing, rainbow-colored, motherfucking _snake_ sprouting from her right shoulder. It curves around to peer up at her with bright yellow eyes, so much fiercer and stronger and almost more _intelligent_ than the snake heads that she had on her arms before.

 _Make it go away_ , she thinks, and for the first time in her life _nothing_ happens. Even in the depths of madness and pain following her first transformation there was always _something_ , some frustrating little wiggle in the depths of her genes, promising an eventual return to her old self.

Now she's trapped, locked, dead...and the feeling crushes her. "Cut it off," she says, watching the snake twist unconcernedly away.

"Karai, I can't--"

 _"Where's my sword!"_ she screams, twisting around, because she has lost control of her body _so_ many times before, ripped from her by brain worms and mutagen, and she won't lose it again, not now, not _forever_ \--

"Please," he begs, grabbing her remaining arm, and she can feel the scales through his fur. "We have to find the others--"

"Fuck you! How the fuck are you so _calm!_ " She can't breathe, and why is her tail so _bright_ , anything and everyone can _see_ her...

"I'm not," he says quietly, and her eyes land on his own arms, where bloody green patches show where fur has been yanked away. She looks up to notice the tear tracks staining the fur under his eyes, the way his ears twitch crazily. "I had my own meltdown while you were passed out, but Karai, we need--"

"We? _We_ aren't doing _shit,"_ she snarls, because seeing the hurt in his eyes is better than acknowledging how the life she's built is crumbling around her. _"Every_ time I go _near_ you and your fucked-up family, everything goes to _hell_ and now you've done it, you've finally fucked me over _permanently._ Are you happy, Leo?" She waves her snake in the air. "My body's never going to be my own again and everyone in the clan _I built_ is probably dead or batshit crazy now, because I saved _your_ scaly ass, so are you fucking _happy?_ "

She expects him to speak up, to mention how unfair and one-sided that little rant was, but his mouth drops open and she suddenly hates him even more than she does herself.

"Don't try to follow me," she hisses, before slithering off the edge of the roof and throwing herself into the darkness and chaos and blood, where she belongs.

He follows her.

She doesn't notice at first, because for a while she goes a little crazy like she did when she first transformed. People try to kill her, spitting venom or guttural screams, and she kills them in return. Sometimes, she kills people just because she feels like it, if "people" is the right word for the moaning, twisted masses that come staggering out of the dark and into her fangs.

If any of her Foot soldiers survive, she doesn't remember seeing them. She thinks she might have killed the ones she did see. She might have stolen a sword from one of them.

There are ample opportunities for her snake to be ripped off, but it defends itself with vim and vigor. She almost admires it, until she realizes that when it eats she feels more fully, and then she just feels even more insane.

After a while, she feels someone following her. She attacks this someone a few times, but he fends her off, blue eyes burning behind his blade. He has opportunities to kill her, but he doesn't take them.

At other times, that someone charges her, swords flashing and hateful howls streaming from his muzzle and blood that isn't his clogging his fur.

Leo, apparently, has gone a little crazy as well. Rapid transformation and abandonment will do that to you, she knows.

She has numerous opportunities to kill him and doesn't.

They roll through the blood and garbage, howling invectives and screaming about five years of fuck-ups. They rehash memories of all the times she led him on, all the times he assumed too much, all the times they tried to work their fucked-up feelings on each other and failed miserably.

Sometimes they just scream about things that have nothing to do with each other. She screams about the Shredder, Tang Shen, and Splinter, and how she hates them all for separate reasons. She screams about feeling the brain worm in her head at night, cold and brutal.

He screams about his father, the agonizing pain of losing him and the quiet fury that comes with being buried under responsibilities at such a strong age. He screams about how part of him is always having his bones broken in a snowy construction site, part of him always limping out of a bathtub, part of him is always watching the world burn and his father fall. He screams about how much he loves his family, and how much he wants to kill them sometimes, and how much he hates himself for letting them get hurt and hurt each other.

They scream, and their voices ring through a burning city that can no longer ignore their presence.

They kiss a few times, but the kiss comes with bites or bruises (she's not sure if that makes them more or less romantic).

These fights to the death/venting sessions leave her feeling raw and empty, but also strangely good. She thinks Leo might feel the same way, because he keeps coming back for more.

Finally, days or weeks later, Karai collapses on the banks of the Hudson. She is very tired. She hzd seen fangs and scales and hair ripped out and grown back. She has witnessed her personality be dragged into the light and flayed by Leo's expert tongue, and done the same to him in return. She is changed, she thinks, although how much she doesn't know.

Her arm snake licks cautiously at her cheek, and she no longer pushes it away. She doesn't think she will ever love it, but it has saved her life enough times and lapped up enough tears to earn her respect.

"Hey."

Leo approaches her cautiously, his hands at his sides. He laps at his muzzle, which she decides look more like than that of a cat than a rat.

He has the same expression as hers: bone-deep exhaustion. All of his fear and anger have been worn away, at least for now, but where they once were she can pick out the faintest glimmer of hope.

When he sinks to his knees at her side, she doesn't pull away or lift her fists. Instead, she uncurls her tail and shrugs off the battered leather jacket she picked up somewhere, watching with interest as he does the same with his sword sheaths.

"I'm sorry," she says, and he doesn't need to ask why.

"I'm sorry," he says, and she doesn't need to ask why.

They cautiously, carefully, explore each other's new bodies, with a gentleness that Karai had assumed they'd both forgotten. Overhead, the mutagen-heavy atmosphere clears up just enough, for the first time, to reveal the faintest glimmer of stars.

"How did you keep finding me?" she asks later.

"My nose," he rubs it carefully, "got turned up to eleven after the bomb went off. I had to focus on your scent, or the rest would have driven me crazy." He glances over at her. "Weren't you using snake hearing or something? You found me a few times, and I wasn't sure how."

"Maybe," she says. She hasn't really, consciously, analyzed her new body's capabilities. All she knows is that since the bomb, things have been a thousand times louder and clearer and sharper than before. She can hear Leo's heartbeat, in perfect sync with her own.

They lie there for a few seconds, considering the possibilities. With his new nose and her new ears, no one in this city--this country--can hide from them. Not if they're willing to work together, to push their limits, to embrace these bodies instead of fearing them.

"We need to find the others," he murmurs into her hair.

She rolls her eyes at them both. "Obviously."

They find Casey first. He's a mutant raccoon, his father is dead, and his little sister Angel has sprouted wings, but except for his occasional meltdowns at the sight of his own bushy tail he seems relatively functional. Angel misses her dad, but is having the time of her life learning to fly and getting to bother her brother's mutant friends. Karai can't help thinking that the annoying little squirt has the makings of a kuniochi.

Shini, when they find her, has a grey fox's muzzle protruding from under her witch's hat and a tail that she insists on trying to dye black. Karai clings to the girl who is her sister in all but blood and allows herself to shake from sheer relief. 

Mikey lost a bunch of weight and now has long hair, which Karai somehow finds weirder than Leo's new fur. He's been living with Mondo Gecko, who usually prefers to hang upside down from the ceiling these days, and some relatively undamaged Mutanimals (if you call Slash sprouting an extra set of arms, Leatherhead needing glasses, Rockwell turning blue, and Kurtzman suddenly resembling a platypus undamaged).

Turns out that Pigeon Pete is also a bit of a savant in his new form, and they've starting selling mood-altering chemicals made from combined reptilian shed. Leo bitches plenty, but they need some way to support themselves. Besides, someone who's spent the past few weeks on a spree of uncontrolled violence really has no right to judge, and they both know it.

Raph is wandering around the city in a daze, pursued by a chattering robot that Karai recognizes as Donnie even before he snatches them up in a fierce metal hug. Raph fights them both at first, but Karai sees the way his face lights up with recognition as he gazes into Leo's desperate blue eyes.

He breaks down, sobbing, and they have to carry him back to the Lair. He starts remembering himself, bit by tiny bit, day by day.

Finding April is the hardest. Her apartment is empty except for her father, who they find sitting in the wreckage of his kitchen with his head blown off.

They've scoured the city for days before Leo decides to herd Casey, Angel, Karai, Shini, and his brothers into the Shellraiser and drive up to Northampton. When they arrive, the farmhouse is floating three feet off the ground and anyone who approaches is sent staggering backward by an angry psychic wave.

Donnie wheels up to the door before Leo can stop him and he's lifted inside, disappearing for several days. Leo goes crazy again from the worry at one point and Karai has to hold him in her coils until he finally calms down.

When the farmhouse finally lowers back to earth, Donnie emerges with a limp April in his arms. Her red hair has morphed into Kraang tentacles and patches of Kraang crystal glitter on her skin, but when she opens her eyes again they're still fixedly, determinedly human.

"It was too loud," she explains as they troop back inside. "I had to get out of the city before I killed everyone." Even now, the presence of other's thoughts sometimes causes her to move or break things, but Donnie has been devising all sorts of breathing techniques and chemical supplements to help her one day enter the city again.

No one mentions her father, or asks what Karai and Leo were up to right after the bomb went off. She imagines that everyone committed their own sins during those dark, mad times, and sometimes the only way you can bear the way of the past is to leave it behind completely.

Karai watches April rest her head on Donnie's mechanical shoulder, following his specifications as she twirls pieces of plastic and metal together in the air, and has to admit they make a cute couple. So do Mikey and Leatherhead, whenever the big alligator comes up to visit.

As for Casey, he proves to be Raph's biggest cheerleader while the turtle recovers his memories. Karai knows the exact date and time of their first kiss, because Angel soars through the house cackling gleefully about it to everyone.

Leo and Shini both start commuting back to the city, Shini for the perfectly legitimate reason of being bored (although she's less so after meeting a girl named Alopex in a recently reopened bar) and Leo because he has some ridiculous idea about "helping people."

It's small things: scaring off looters, stopping fights, trying to get food and resources to the ones who need it most. It's a form of redemption, it's a way to come back from the apocalypse, it's a means of creating change. It's a change for him to walk the streets of New York without starting a riot, something Leo had never thought he'd do.

Karai starts coming along, to point and laugh and maybe beat up some shmucks. That's all it is. Of course it is.

On the anniversary of the bomb going off she and Leo dance, awkwardly and maybe a little drunkenly, on a rooftop to the music blaring from someone's apartment. She wraps her snake around his back and luxuriates in the smell of his fur. The city buzzes around them, not exactly at peace (never at peace) but not engulfed in flames anymore, either.

 _This is our world_ , she thinks. _It's new and raw and broken, just like us. We don't have to hide anymore, and if anyone scares us we can just scare them back._

_We might not get it right this time, but we will try. And that's all we can ever do._


	6. The Art Of Being Okay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leo faces a monster, but he's not as alone as he once was.

It's cold, so cold, the kind of cold that would send him crashing to his knees if it weren't for the adrenaline burning in his mouth like gasoline. His swords are gone and he feels wrong without them, off-balance. Blood drips from his knuckles, splashing on his feet. He aches all over and some of his bones grind together when they move, in ways bones aren't supposed to.

But he stands, because that's what he's supposed to do. It's been drilled into him since the day he could talk. Stand. Fight. Defend your clan, no matter how much it hurts.

No matter how many times he's done this before.

He feels a shadow moving over him, colder than the darkest depths of space, and Leo knows space. The monster breathes in and out, voice louder and raspier than it ever was in real life.

Leo doesn't want to turn around. If he doesn't look, maybe it will go away. A childish thought, but isn't he supposed to be a child?

In this moment he is one, and this moment will last forever. A part of him will always be trapped here: young, frightened, in pain, knowing that the game was doomed from the start and desperate for it not to end.

Eventually he does turn around, because he has no choice.

The Shredder stands over him, a mass of spikes and growing green light. He is death and the devil and every boogeyman Leo has ever had. He is streaked with blood, blood that Leo knows was shed by everyone he loves. His eyes are without pity, blank and empty. Leo wonders if he looked the same at the beginning of his life, back when he was an animal, pitiless and unaware.

Leo braces himself for the flurry of blows, surgically precise and impossibly strong, that will break him into a thousand pieces. He knows what is coming by now; it has happened so many times he's gotten used to it.

But the first punch still sends deep, impossible cracks spiderwebbing through his plastron, splitting him down the core. He screams, spitting blood and vomit, as his cracking ribs shred his internal organs. He falls backward and the impact makes him scream louder.

He scrambles away, even though it just makes the pain worse, even though he knows the proper move is to lay there and take his punishment. The less he resists, the more quickly it'll be over, and he can finally--

"Wake up."

The voice is soft, but strong, a command instead of a plea. Leo's eyes snap open, and he peers over at glowing green ones. Karai lies besides him on the pillow, one hand resting on his cheek. Her hair, longer than it was when they were children, spills across his neck and brushes against his undamaged plastron.

"Welcome back," she tells him, her voice devoid of judgment. He's woken her up from plenty of her own bad dreams, after all.

Leo leans back and sighs, his voice hoarse from screaming. Twenty years. Twenty years, and still the nightmares haunt him.

"Splinter?" she asks, running a soothing hand up and down his arm.

He shakes his head. "Construction site." She nods, the same he would if she said "Mutagen" or "Brain worm" or simple "Shredder."

Leo rests a head on her shoulder, breathing in her scent. There's a scar on her neck from her messy final rejection of the Foot clan, the day she decided that surviving alongside Leo and his brothers was a much more "interesting" path in life than carrying on the Shredder's legacy.

The door to their room swings open, and a soft voice asks "Mommy? Daddy?"

Shen stands in the doorway, wearing the _Space Heroes_ nightgown her uncle Mikey got her for Christmas. The light from the hallway glints on her black hair and blue eyes, casting shadows across the swirls of green and white scales that cover her small body.

"Were you yelling?" she asks, hugging her teddy bear to her chest.

"It's okay, pumpkin," Karai says, giving their daughter a smile. "Your daddy just had a nightmare, that's all."

Shen approaches the bed carefully, eyes wide. "Grownups have nightmares?"

"Everyone does," Karai says. "It's nothing to worry about."

She moves to look down at Leo, face thoughtful in a way that always reminds him of her grandfather. "Do you want me to sleep with you, Daddy?"

Daddy. Always Daddy. He'll train her, he'll pass on everything he knows, but he'll be her Daddy, never her Sensei. Such a small thing, but it feels as monumental as Karai leaving the Foot.

He gives her a broad smile, blinking the last of the shadows away. "That sounds very nice." She squeals as he lifts her up, settling her neatly between them.

As she snuggles up against Karai's chest, Shen rests a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I'll protect you from bad dreams, Daddy," she promises.

He kisses her on the head, and believes her.


	7. We Are Monsters (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything becomes different when you make the world a little crueler.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING! Dark, nasty shit ahead. Title inspired by Ruelle's Monsters.

Leo knew what it was like to be hungry. There were winters when almost all of the algae died, when their father had to leave them alone for hours only to return with the barest pickings.

Once, when they were very small and Donnie was very sick, he came back with a bag full of groceries and blood staining the hem of his robe, something awful in his eyes. He never did it again, no matter how bad things got, but Leo learned the lesson anyway: sometimes, you have to do desperate things to survive.

Leo was the oldest, so he knew that he had to give parts of his portion to his little brothers. He slipped some on to his father's plate too, because he needed his strength to protect them

_(and because sometimes Leo had nightmares about Miwa coming back and Sensei not needing them anymore)_

Sometimes the hunger would stay with him for weeks or months, a gnawing presence in his belly. Sometimes it got so bad that the only way he could get to sleep was by training himself to exhaustion

 _(and the training probably made things worse, but he_ had _to because what if Miwa came back and did it better?)_

As it got older, he would find himself slinking out of the lair while his father and brothers slept, scouring the sewers for food. What little he ate often made him more hungry, but he kept it up anyway. There wasn't any choice.

He'd see rats running by, and the sight would make his mouth water, but the few times he managed to catch one he let it go. His Sensei was a rat; Leo loved and honored him too much to eat one. He was a good son, always had been: Trustworthy. Loyal. Obedient. Disciplined.

_(But he wasn't human, he wasn't a pretty little girl who looked like her mother, sometimes he hated himself for not being Miwa and sometimes he wondered if his father felt the same)_

He was eleven when he found the man.

He hadn't eaten for two days. There wasn't enough food for him, there was barely enough for his brothers and fathers. They were all hungry, but Leo was the only one who kept silent, because complaining was disrespectful.

_(Miwa had never gotten a chance to complain. She had died before she could take up more than the barest minimum space or food)_

After Mikey's whining was finally drowned out by snores, Leo wiggled out of bed and vanished into the sewers. He moved quickly, unwilling to even look at the rats for fear of giving into temptation. There was a sense of urgency in the air, as if he was looking for something in particular, although he wasn't sure what.

When he found what he was looking for, it was sprawled facedown at the base of a particularly large pipe, reeking of piss and shit and alcohol. It groaned at the vibrations from his approaching feet, shifting to reveal a reddened face covered in a weird mix of fur and skin.

Leo froze, one hand going to the small swords he always wore when he left the Lair. The proper thing to do, he thought, would be to run away as quickly and quietly as possible. Humans were dangerous. He must never engage with them. If one of them saw him and told others, he would get himself and his family in trouble.

But instead Leo stood still, struck by a strange instinct to glare at the man. He was so _hungry_ and the man looked so full, so _fat_ , like he had all the food he could ever need, and he was _human_ , so what was he doing in the filthy sewers anyway?

Before he could try to answer of these questions, the man sat up with groan. "Aarghh...." The bottom dropped out of Leo's stomach just as the man's eyes locked on him, and immediately widened. Spit flew out of his mouth as he gasped "Holy _fucking_ shi--"

And then Leo's blade whipped across his throat, because if anyone heard the man the humans would find them and Splinter would be so _mad_ , he'd smack Leo until he couldn't stand up straight and his eyes would be _so_ disappointed 

_(and Miwa would_ never _have screwed up like this, Miwa was smart and lovely and oh so perfect, their father would have thrown his honor to the winds a thousand times if she was hungry but they were ugly little green things and they weren't_ worth _it)_

Blood spurted across Leo's chest, hot and bright, as the man fell over gurgling.

His world tilted. He needed to run away or pass or something, but his knees locked. He'd done something terrible, something unforgivable, he was gasping from the metallic smell in the air.

And that smell was...actually kind of nice.

Leo's stomach rumbled, and the fear melted away.

From a distance, he watched himself drop to his knees over the man's body and dip a careful finger into his still-twitching neck. He put it in his mouth and sucked thoughtfully. It wasn't too bad--bit of a bitter aftertaste, but bearable.

He looked down at the man thoughtfully for a while, than lifted his sword and slowly, carefully began slicing up his stomach. When he made a decent-sized gap, he reached in and began pulling at the man's organs.

After all...it wasn't like the man was a _person_ , was he? Not as Leo knew people. He didn't have green skin or fur, he didn't even look like the people in Sensei's photographs.

And he was _hungry_. He needed his strength, so he could be a good son.

He ate the man carefully, remembering that he'd sometime made himself sick in the past by eating too much too fast after a hungry spell. The man tasted like hamburgers.

Leo cleaned himself off carefully in the bath when he returned home that night, and every night after.

He lived off the man for weeks--when he started to rot, Leo just shrugged and ate the maggots. His digestive system was tougher than a human's

_(tougher than Miwa's. He was tougher than her, better. He would be. Had to be)_

Later, when they had more food again, Leo buried the man in a little place at the back of his mind. He was well-behaved, sophisticated, as like a human as he could be.

Sometimes, he looked in the mirror and thought he saw a little craziness looking back.

When he was fifteen, he met a girl who had a little craziness in her eyes, too. She was human, but she looked enough like the people in Sensei's photographs that he could still see her as a person.

After his father told him who she was, a part of Leo refused to accept it. Hamato Miwa was his childhood boogeyman, the girl who would come back one day and get him and his brothers thrown out on the street. She was a monster, and he wanted nothing to with her.

But Karai...She tried to kill him, sure, but she never screamed in horror or ran away. He felt comfortable with her in a way he had never felt with anyone, even during their battles to the death.

He finally told her the truth, because he was scared that she would somehow find out on her own and get revenge on him and his brothers for hiding it. She disappeared for a while, and that hurt, but at least she wasn't trying to take his place. After all, she was still just a human after everything. He could forget her.

Than she came back. Than Leo had to rescue her, even though Splinter told them not to go (despite the fact that he'd already punished Leo for letting her get captured in the first place, with a nerve attack that left him in searing pain for half an hour).

She hugged Splinter, he hugged her back, and Leo's heart broke. When she went to kill Shredder he asked to come with, because he had to make himself useful to Miwa. She knocked him out, and he quietly wept because even if Karai still wanted them around she would prove herself their superior by killing the Shredder and Splinter would have no reason to keep them.

Karai was captured. There was mutagen. When she emerged in her new form, writing and hissing, Leo's heart stopped.

He had never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life.

Afterwards, Splinter gave Leo one of the worst beatings he had ever had, methodically covering his arms and legs with bruises that throbbed for days. He wept as he did it, telling Leo that he was a failure as a brother and a son and a student, that he would trade him for Miwa in a heartbeat.

Leo didn't care. Karai was no longer his enemy, or his replacement. She was like him now, and no matter what happened next he would love her without fear.

There was an invasion, an ambush, a long and painful recovery. Leo dreamed of feasting on the Shredder's entrails, of sharing them with Karai like spaghetti.

He tried so hard to find Karai, even though his brothers didn't really seem to care. He couldn't understand why--she was no danger to them, shapeshifter or not. She could never be fully human, so they would never be replaced, and even if they didn't like her weren't they at least grateful that the specter of Miwa had been removed from their lives?

They traveled back in time and Leo smiled down at the baby in his arms, even though she was soveryclearly not Karai. She was weak and flabby, her face almost completely devoid of spark. Her mother, Tang Shen, liked them, although Leo doubted she would have felt the same if she knew them when they were small and filthy and eating all the food.

He saw his father's human self from a distance, and had a very strange, very brief urge to run over there and chop off his head. 

They returned home to find that Shredder had gotten Karai first. He stuffed a brain worm in her head, sucking all the beautiful crazy out of her eyes and replacing them with cold, flat marbles. The sight of her felt like a thousand daggers in Leo's heart.

After learning about what Leo had been allowed to happen, Sensei beat him again, popping his bad knee out of joint. Then he choked Leo out with a belt and he woke up stuffed in a cabinet at the back of his father's room, where he hadn't been sent since he was small and squirmy during meditation. He wasn't let out for three hours.

He didn't hate his father for that. Honestly, he didn't. Splinter was just sad about losing his family yet again, and sometimes when he was sad he had to take it out on his children. That was just the way things worked.

Splinter took so much loving care of them, had taught them so much, and expected so little. He just wanted them to be stronger ninja, really, and he always made sure they weren't hurt too badly in the process.

Sure, maybe all the nerve attacks gave Mikey the occasional spasm, maybe Raph was never quite the same after Sensei locked him un a box full of bugs, maybe Donnie spent most of his time hiding from their father in their lab, but everything was all right because most of Sensei's wrath was usually focused on Leo, and Leo was strong, he could take it. He had been built to take it.

Leo told himself all this, and went that wasn't enough he distracted himself with plans to save Karai and keep his family safe.

Splinter taught Leo a mantra to use against Karai. He gave Leo cuts and bruises to heal, adding more when he couldn't heal the first ones. Later, he progressed to injections of small amounts of venom handed over by a shamefaced Donnie. Leo lost count of the number of times he almost died before getting a hang of it. It was worth it, though. He saved everyone.

Karai put them in death traps, although to be honest Leo was more worried about what Splinter would do after they got free.

He saved his brothers, and Sensei saved Karai. He did this by hurting her very badly, but that was okay because sometimes you have to hurt the people you love in order to help them. Karai herself was gone, but they found the brain worm in the nearby sewers, so everything was fine.

When he got home, Splinter made Leo take a very cold shower while lecturing him on the importance of not getting captured, and on his failure to capture Karai first. Leo nodded and said "Hai, Sensei" through chattering teeth.

Afterwards, he staggered into his bedroom on frozen legs, rubbing himself frantically as he tried to nudge his cold blood back into circulation. He fell asleep, and dreamed that the blankets around him were Karai's beautiful coils.

He looked for her, endlessly, ceaselessly. His brothers still weren't interested, so he started going out alone. The more he went, the easier it became to do it by himself. Splinter smacked him around some for not getting his brothers under control, so he tried. He barked and growled and punched Raph, and they responded by all disappearing for days.

They all had places to go. Mikey had Leatherhead and the Mutanimals; Donnie had gone to "hang out" with April. Raph was able to crash at Casey's place because the boy's dad was a depressed lump and his little sister didn't give a shit about someone's species as long as they provided juice boxes.

When they came back, Leo was nursing a broken arm and talked in a raspy voice from the bruises on his throat.

Leaders paid the price when their teams screwed up. If things went wrong, it was because he hadn't set a good example.

Splinter didn't say anything about the missed lessons or the fact that the others smelled faintly of sex. He probably expected Leo to administer punishment, as was his duty, but Leo was so scared about being left on his own again that he didn't dare. Sensei was hurt him for that, too, but it wasn't as scary because Leo was no longer alone.

He kept up with his search. Maybe it was a futile quest, maybe she never wanted to see him again because he was a freaky failure, but he loved her and he wanted to make Sensei happy by bringing her home. 

Did he want to bring her home? He wasn't always sure.

He wandered the sewers until his feet hurt, looking for scat and bits of skin. He kept his ears pricked, listening for the rush of scales on stone. He took deep breaths, searching for the smell of water and night wind that had followed Karai in all her forms since her transformation.

And then it dawned on him--maybe Karai was hungry, too. Maybe she was somewhere down here, looking for food, and she couldn't find any. Maybe she was starving, desperately...but not asking for help because the food she need wasn't food Sensei would want to provide.

There were some things that Sensei, as wise as he was, didn't understand. But Leo did.

So he set about getting the food his family member needed, because that was his duty as the eldest.

It was surprisingly easy.


	8. We Are Monsters (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A boy, a girl, and some dead bodies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of the previous story, but I changed the last part's ending a little so you might have to read that so as not to get confused. Warnings still apply.

The dinosaur had put up a hell of fight, swinging its armored fists and firing its laser gun while barking in that strange tongue. Karai didn't know where it had come from, and now she probably never would (or care).

It had managed to make a nasty gash along one side, but she hadn't minded, because the big beast would feed her for weeks--until she threw up while eating it. She tried to keep eating, and threw up again. And again. And again.

Whatever that dinosaur was made of, it was something that not even mutant digestive systems could handle. She was pissed at all the trouble she had gone to for nothing, although she comforted itself by mutilating it beyond all recognition.

She stayed underground, her crusted wound aching and throbbing. If she had shifted to human she could have limped to the surface, stolen some medical supplies and real food, but being human meant

_her father's dead eyes and his cock tearing her insides up and cold cold metal tables and the screaming pain of worms_

She didn't like that. And every time she'd tried to shift, that was all she could feel.

So she had stayed down there for a little while, doing best not to track blood around as the pain in her stomach slowly grew worse, wondering if she was going to die and whether she deserved it.

Then she heard the footsteps, accompanied by the the distinct noise of dragging and the bright smell of blood.

Her heart leapt; there was _wounded_ in the sewers, something potentially worse off than she, something that didn't even seem concerned about keeping herself hidden. She wriggled across the sewer pipes, growing closer and closer, gritting her teeth through the pain because there was _meat_ , she could smell it, and--

"Um. Hi."

It was Leo. He had blood on his sword hilts, he was blushing like a nervous schoolboy, and he was holding a dead woman by one leg. Blood streamed from the woman's throat, mixing in with her filthy hair and the folds of her short jacket.

She wasn't sure if it was hunger or shock, but something made her fall off her perch and tumble to the ground with a painful _thump_.

"Oh God, are you o--?" She slithered backward, hissing and spitting, because the inside of her head was fractured and all she could think of when she looked at him was a sword swinging at her head and a rat with bruising hands--

"It's all right." He was backing away from his kill, arms raised, but she was already preparing to lunge because his hands were near his swords and his stupid brothers were probably sneaking up on her, she wouldn't hear them over her pounding heart--

Leo dropped to his knees and bowed his head, exposing his neck.

The sight made all three of her jaws drop open, because you didn't _do_ that. Ninja or mutant, you didn't just _submit_ to your enemy, especially when the enemy looked anything like her. And you definitely didn't bring them food.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said carefully, staring fixedly at the ground. She could hear his heart beating a mile a minute, but when he spoke he just sounded a little embarassed. "I...I just was worried that you might be getting hungry down here, so--I brought you something to eat." He tugged on the woman with one hand, awkwardly shoving her in front of him.

Karai looked the woman up and down, studying the pale skin, the face frozen and shocked, the small and sparkly skirt. A hooker. Leo had killed a hooker. For her.

She couldn't remember human interactions enough to decide if she was supposed to find this revolting or romantic, so she just stared.

"Your, your side," he added, still not looking up. "It looked bad. Can I--" She cut him off with a snarl, because no way in hell was she letting him anywhere _near_ her vulnerable parts until she had worked out this weird morass of feelings.

But the dead human looked kind of tasty, and she was hungry, so she dragged it away.

She ate carefully, wondering if he'd managed to fill the human with drugs, even if she couldn't taste anything. But she didn't feel any different after eating it, and no one else had shown up while she was distracted, so maybe--just maybe--he didn't have an ulterior motive? Maybe he just wanted to feed her?

That was kind of...sweet.

The next time he brought food (a ratty little man wrapped in a filthy blanket), he asked "Can you shift?" She nodded.

"Can you talk?" Another nod, although she was focused on checking the man's ears for piercing because she'd accidentally swallowed one last time and had a bitch of time throwing it up.

"Do you want to?" She shook her head, expecting him to 

Cleaning and stitching herself was a little tough with mouths for hands, but she managed, and she was grateful.

By now, she had time to consider _what the fuck was going on_ in greater detail. Leo had always been so _noble_ , to an irritating extent. He may not have grown up with humans, sure, but he still interacted with them and treated them with equals.

Of course, Karai actually _had_ grown up with humans, and she was treating them like gourmet food. Than again, being human had brought her nothing but pain and she could admit to herself that getting a worm fried in her brain _(thank you, Splinter)_ had driven her somewhat up the wall. What was Leo's excuse?

The third time he brought her a kill, she decided to test him. Instead of dragging it away, she tore it right away. She snapped and tore with all three mouths, sending blood spraying across their faces. She cracked the bones and sucked the marrow dries, sucked up the last of the guts.

When she was done, she tossed the remains away before looking up, expecting to see him drawing his sword or running away at top speed.

Leo remained kneeling, and didn't flinch as blood dripped down his forehead.

They sat there for a few seconds, the air heavy with her confusion and his...whatever.

Than he opened his mouth and told her a story about a hungry winter and a drunkard fell into the sewer. And everything made a lot more sense.

It dawned on Karai that she'd underestimated Leo, what he was and what he was capable of. But for once...being wrong didn't scare or frighten her. It made her feel curious, instead.

When he was done, she took a moment to look him over carefully, thinking, and that was when she aw his hand.

His left fist slowly opened and closed, steady as a heartbeat. At first he thought he was nervous, but his calm voice and smooth heartbeat said otherwise.

She reached out with one hand and ran a tongue over his knuckle as it flexed open again. He twitched at that, and looked down with a noticeable blush. "It...it's nothing. Nerve attacks just mess you sometimes, for a little while." He sighed. "Master Splinter was...he was angry about--it doesn't matter."

 _It doesn't matter_. Familiar words, ones that she'd said to herself far too many times.

They regarded each other in awkward silence, and then he pushed himself to his feet and walked away.

When he was gone, Karai spent an hour meditating before finally deciding she was stable enough to turned back to human, if only for a few minutes. She traced her fingers over the old scars and burns, each one from a different mistake, and shifted back to serpent before the memories could drown her.

He brought her another kill, and another. Sometimes he came with bruises, and he knew it wasn't because his victims had had the skill to fight back.

Karai didn't talk, but while she ate he told her about his home life. Sometimes the things he discussed were good, like when he recounted his Mario Kart tournaments with his brothers or the extra-larger socks Raph had made them all during one particularly cold mutation day. Sometimes they were just plain weird, like when he confessed his fear that Leatherhead had managed to knock up Mikey. 

And sometimes the matters he talked about were dark ones. The more often he visited, the less he held back.

He told her he sometimes thought in serious detail about strangling his younger brothers, especially Raph. He told her that he would stuff a gag into his mouth at night, because he was worried about waking people up with nightmares from the construction site. He told her that April and Casey had become familiar enough faces that he would never feed them to her, but if they ever hurt his brothers he would kill them in a heartbeat.

He told her about Hamato Miwa, his monster, and admitted that he was glad that she had been mutated. She probably should have been mad at that, but she wasn't because she felt the same.

And he talked about Splinter. He seemed to be getting mad more often these days, and Karai suspected it had something to do with Leo's failure to bring her home, although he never said as much.

"He loves us," Leo explained, rubbing the fresh set of marks adorning his throat. "He pushes us because he wants us to be the best we can be, and I...I'm the leader. I have to be the best of the best, and I need to understand the price of failure."

She nodded and wondered if ought tell him just how rehearsed that little speech sounded. She suspected he already knew.

One night, she followed him home.

She walked through the doors of the lair on human legs, still shaking after weeks of disuse. She could wear a human skin without risk of a panic attack, but it didn't feel right anymore and she doubted it ever would. Her side was a little stiff, although the wound had pretty much healed by now.

Leo didn't know she was coming, of course. No one did.

Karai checked his brothers' rooms first, intending to knock them out with nerve pinches, but they weren't there. She remembered saying that they were spending less time at home these days, a note of bitterness in his voice.

Leo himself was curled up under his _Space Heroes_ comforter, snoring softly, fast asleep after a long day of training and a long day of hunting for her. She peered in at him for a few seconds, before continuing on to his father's room.

She threw open the doors to Splinter's bedroom with a bang; he jerked upright, ears twitching as he reached for his sword, only to freeze when he saw her. "M--Miwa...?"

Karai smiled warmly at him. "Hi, Daddy."

"Miwa..." he threw his arms around her, breathing in her scent. "My love...I missed you so much."

She wrapped an arm around him. "I know." She turned her other arm into a snake and buried it deep in his side.

The strike was surgical; deep enough to disable, but not to kill. Karai shoved him away and Splinter fell to the floor, screaming as blood dribbled from between his fingers.

He stared up at her, gasping. "Miwa..."

"Shhh," she said, as feet pounded down the hallway. "He's coming."

Leo kicked down the door and skidded to a stop, eyes wide. _"Karai?"_

"Help me!" Splinter shrieked, trying and failing to stand up. "Shredder must have put in another worm--"

"He didn't," Karai said shortly. "Leo knows that, he was with me half the night."

Splinter's head snapped to Leo, his eyes blazing with fear and rage. "Leonardo, is this true?"

He backed up against the wall, shaking. "I--I--"

"I don't like being in anyone's debt," Karai explained, picking up Splinter's sword and looking at it thoughtfully. "You've been bringing me all those lovely kills, and it wouldn't be an equal relationship if I didn't give you something in return."

For a moment, Splinter looked too angry to be scared. _"Kills?_ After everything I taught you--"

She placed her foot on his throat, pressing just enough to cut off his words. "Hush."

"Karai," said Leo, breathing hard. "Karai, what is this?"

She shrugged. "Same thing you gave me, I guess. A push." She tossed the sword to him, and he caught it, than looked shocked at himself.

"Leo," said Karai. "If I walk away right now, and let you tend to his injuries, what do you think will happen?"

He just gaped at her, shaking his head.

"Do you think he'll be grateful to still be alive, to have you at his side? Or will do you think he'll angry? Angrier than he's ever been, maybe, because you saw him bleed?" His face went pale. "And you, you've seen him angry." Karai sighed. "We...we both know from experience that an angry master is not a pretty thing."

"I..." his breath hitched.

And than Splinter snatched his stick from the floor, and slammed into the back of her knees. Karai went down hard, not using to catching herself with one human arm, yelping as her wound ripped open again. He lurched to his feet and raised his stick over his head, ready to bring it down.

Leo chopped off his head with a single blow.

Blood splashed down all over Karai, burning hot, but she didn't pull away. She'd have to get used to such things before she killed the Shredder, after all..

Leo dropped his knees and threw up, shaking. She let him retch, let him stare blankly at the floor as long she needed. While she waited Karai pulled the tie from his father's robe and wrapped it around her own waist, binding the injury as best she could. Splinter's robe fell open, but what did it matter? He was dead.

"How, how _could_ you _?_ " Leo finally gasped out, his voice raw and choked with tears.

She rolled her eyes. "I didn't do anything. You were the one who defended a member of your clan from an immediate threat."

"He was my _father_ ," he murmured, almost to himself, as he staggered to his feet with the sword in hand.

"He was," she said calmly. "He was also your monster." She turned and peered down the length of his blade. "If you're going to kill me for helping you, I suggest you do it now, because I'm not in a mood to drag things out."

Leo stared at her for a long minute, before throwing down the sword and bursting into tears.

"There, there," she murmured, pulling him to her chest and lowering them both to the floor. "It's over now. You're free. And once you help me kill Shredder, I'll be, too."

When he was all cried out, she reached over to his father's corpse and tore it open with her right snake head, feeling around a little before pulling out a small, stopped heart.

"Here," she said, handing it to him. "Eat. You'll feel better."

And he did.


	9. Nothing Is Gone Forever

Shinigami was cooked into being the day after America dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. By the standards of her people, this made her very young indeed. Her great-grandmother had walked the earth back when it was still made of molten rock.

Shini didn't really care about the big, world-shaping stuff, though; she wasn't like her sisters. She wanted to hear about the mortals her relatives had encountered, human and inhuman. In Shini's view, mortal stories were precious because they would one day end, so you had to tell them while you had the chance.

She particularly enjoyed the stories about feudal Japan, when ninja waged gruesome battles in the shadows and kappa had lurked in the pools. Both of those creatures sounded very interesting to Sini.

"I would like to see a kappa," she said thoughtfully, hugging her knees to her chest.

Her grandmother sighed. "They're gone, dear heart, wiped out long ago. A pity, too--weren't much for conversation, but at least they had style."

Shini frowned. "What about a ninja?"

"They're gone, too, I suppose," chimed in her great aunt. "Of course, it's hard to tell for sure; it was impossible to keep track of the tricky little bastards in the first place." She smirked. "They had better self-preservation than the samurai, at last. Great clanking, disembowelment-happy morons, all suffocated by that ridiculous Bushido. I used to gut them out of pity."

"Hush!" called a third aunt. "My shows are on," and the conversation was over.

But Shini kept thinking about ninja and kappa, until the night she heard distant screams and gunshots while walking down the street in Tokyo. Curious, she headed towards the noise (she didn't call the police, because she found most authority figures irritating and unnecessary).

She watched with fascination as a man in a business suit topped out of a ground-floor window, firing a gun, and was followed by a slender girl in a black mask. In one hand she held a bloody sword, a weapon that Shini's relatives claimed was no longer used by humans. She beheaded the man with a single blow, spewing crimson across the pavement.

Someone else had apparently decided to call the cops by now, because Shini could hear sirens in the distance. The girl looked up, eyes wide, and seemed to realize that she was standing in the middle of a pretty obvious mess. "Shit," she muttered to herself, and started to turn away, only to jerk to a halt at the sight.

"Are you a ninja?" Shini asked with delight. The girl looked at her like it was insane (people did that a lot around Shini), and approached her with sword drawn. Shini chuckled at the sight. "What are you going to do with that?"

"No witnesses," the girl growled.

Shini put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you going to ask me why I didn't run?"

"Because you're an idiot," the girl muttered, swinging the sword at her head. Shini dodged out the way, cackling.

They fought, dashing and twirling through the shadows of Tokyo as the sirens faded behind. The girl lost, but she gave Shini a real run for her money, which considering the fact that Shini literally had decades of practice on her was pretty impressive.

"I never thought I'd meet a ninja," she said thoughtfully, twirling the captured sword thoughtfully. The girl grunted something from where she sat on her knees, panting and dripping blood from her nose. "What's your name?" Shini asked her.

The girl looked up her, dark eyes glittering defiantly. "Karai," she spat.

Shini tossed the sword aside with a clatter. "Well, Karai," she said, "Would you like to come back to my place and get cleaned up? I've always wanted to have a ninja in a guess."

Karai stared at her for a few seconds, emotions flickering across her face--fear, confusion, suspicion, curiosity--before she finally extended her hand.

They had sex the first time that night. Shini traced her fingers over Karai's scars and didn't need to ask to know that they were from dark places. Karai was sharp-edged and scratched-up, like a sword that had seen centuries of use, and Shini loved that about her.

Afterwards, Shini made it clear that this relationship, if relationship it was, would not be mutually exclusive. That wasn't the type of person she was; she wondered if it would send Karai running for the hills.

It didn't. And as the years passed, what started as sex and curiosity turned into something deeper: friendship, a shared appetite for chaos, love. Shini showed Karai what she was one night, and the other girl didn't seem to mind.

The thing they fought about, more than anything, was Karai's father. Sometimes she'd arrive with bruises and cuts, or there'd be something _off_ about her movements that suggested damage beneath the skin. "Training practice," she'd mutter, and Shini would raise her eyebrows, because there was no schmuck who could take Karai down in simple training, and set about ferreting out the truth.

"He loves me," Karai would claim. "He's trying to make me stronger." If Shini pushed, her eyes would go flat and she'd say, voice dead calm, "If you hurt him, I'll kill you. End of discussion."

And Shini had fallen deeper in love than she thought, because she didn't immolate Karai for threatening her, and she didn't do anything about her father. Not even when Oroku Saki committed the ultimate sin of calling Karai to New York, making it explicit clear that Shini was to be left behind.

Before she left, after all the last minute screwing and weeping and fighting, Shini held Karai to her chest and said, "If you want to forget me while you're gone, that's fine. But if you find someone else, and you want to have them, and you want to have me, too...that's okay." She smirked before adding. "As long as I think they're fuckable, of course."

For the first few months they Skyped about normal things, like comparing New York to Tokyo or navigating the complexities of webcam sex. And than one day Karai came online bruised and blushing, in a way she hadn't been since Shini had met her. With a little digging, Shini was eventually able to drag out a story, and a name: Leo.

According to Karai, Leo blushed like a girl, fought like a demon, and possessed a fascinating mix of dorkiness and sharp-edged sass. He was also a member of a rival clan that her father was determined to wipe from existence, which was a point in his favor for Shini.

Most interesting of all, he wasn't human. Karai used the term "mutant," but Shini knew a kappa when she heard one described. The idea of meeting another creature that had been supposedly wiped from existence interested her very much.

Unfortunately, Karai's relationship with Leo was much rockier than what she had with Shini. For example, there was that time when she showed up cursing Leo's name after he tried to kill her father with a rocket launcher. Shini's question about whether he had at least looked hot while firing it was perhaps ill-advised, and Karai didn't speak to her for two weeks.

Things started looking up on the kappa-front after a while, with Karai admitting that they had started to bond again over quasi-fights to the death and flirtatious kidnappings.

Than she showed up, ranting about how Leo had told her a terrible lie about her mother, her father, and a mutant rat called Splinter, and didn't appreciate Shini's suggestion that she investigate matters for herself.

And than Karai disappeared, and she was too far away for Shini to do an accurate divination spell. She couldn't figure out if she had just been ghosted, or if something more serious had happened, and it drove her a little nuts.

And than aliens attacked New York.

Those were very stressful months for Shini. She coped the way she usually did: by setting small objects on fire, dying her hair different colors, killing her asshole downstairs neighbor. And than she started employing unusual coping mechanisms, like sobbing in the corner or staying in bed for days, because her precious scarred sword was _missing_ , maybe _dead_ , and the briefness of mortal lives was no longer interesting when it was a mortal you loved.

After the aliens were defeated, Shini waited for a little while longer, and than she got sick of waiting. Fuck Oroku Saki, she was going to find Karai whatever it took.

So she made her way to New York and did a divination spell that led her underground, of all places. She spent hours stumbling around in the dark, getting her shoes wet and muttering to herself about how the make-up sex better be worth it to distract herself from how terrified it was.

When the massive white snake lurched out of the dark, the only thing that could have shocked Shini more was if said snake had opened its mouth and pleaded for help in Karai's voice.

Of course that was what happened, because it turned out her relatives didn't know jack and the world was as full of crazy shit as it'd had always been.

She hauled Karai back to the hotel and hypnotized everyone into ignoring them and giving her an extra-sized suite for free. For days they'd holed up together, cuddling and talking and engaging in the occasional dual meltdown while Karai cycled through forms.

Eventually, Shini pieced together the whole dark story: the lies, the transformation, the madness, the brain worm. She held Karai as they both wept; Karai's tears were of pain and grief, while Shini's were of pure rage.

"Lamia," she whispered into Karai's hair.

"What?"

"It's a shapeshifter. A woman who turns into a snake. Beautiful, deadly, fierce, like nothing the world has ever seen or dreamed possible. That's what you are now."

The second time aliens invaded New York, Karai was in the grips of a bad panic attack. Shini held her head in her lap and stroked her hair, watching dinosaurs rampage by. She wondered if Karai's kappa--their kappa, perhaps--was somewhere out there, lost in the scrum, and sent him good wishes.

Than the earth exploded.

Shini woke up in her bed the next morning, or rather that same morning, none the worse for wear except for a throbbing headache and some weird memories. No one seemed to remember what it happened except for her family, but they had always been special.

 _"It happens sometimes,"_ her great-grandmother explained over the phone. _"Something particularly nasty happens, and someone has to go back in time to clean it up. It is interesting that the Time Witches don't seem to be involved this time. All those little brats seem to have be having a meltdown over the issue. By the way, you have a niece._ _"_

Shini wasn't sure if Karai believed her about what had happened to the world, not that it really mattered. All of her lamia's focus was on wiping Oroku Saki from the face of the earth, and Shini was right behind her.

Of course, things gotten off to a rather sloppy start after they got in a fight with the Hamato family. She kicked their collective asses, of course, only to get her own ass kicked by that little redhead who just happened to be a super-powerful _witch_ \--which would have been very nice to know _beforehand_ , Karai darling, _thank you_

Shini was very intrigued by all of the little kappas, but Karai was right...there was something about Leo. His face was young, but there was something in his eyes that made him look older than Shini's grandmother. He had the air of someone who'd seen and experienced some profoundly disturbing shit and walked away, which she'd found immediately intriguing. Plus, he looked as fuckable when he fought as Karai did, so they were a very nice matched set.

Their duo officially became a trio after Leo briefly broke from his father in what Shini thought was a rather stupid debate about morality (mortals lived short enough lives at it was, so why did people like Splinter get so hung up about killing the nasty ones?)

He was so nervous the first time, even more nervous than Karai had been, but they took care of him and showed him how to take care of them.

"You're beautiful," he murmured to Shini afterward, as Karai leapt between them. "Like a star that fell to Earth."

And what had started as cautious exploration slowly turned, once again, into something fierce and bright.

There was no smooth riding off into the sunset, of course. Shredder finally died, but not before hurting Karai and killing Splinter (and Leo did it much more quickly than Shini would have preferred, sadly). Leo and Karai were both left to handle their own opposing clans, and Shini sometimes felt stretched between them.

But if kappa, witches, and lamias could survive long after everyone had believed they were extinct, their relationship could survive, too. For all that Leo, Karai, and Shini liked to pretend at cynical and hard-bitten exteriors, there was still more than enough love in their hearts for each other and their families.

It wouldn't last, of course. Shini knew, and they did too. One day, her kappa and lamia would fade away and die, leaving her alone once again. Shini would find eventually new people, other strange creatures to care for and protect, but Leo and Karai would always occupy a place in her heart.

That was why every moment they had together counted.

The most precious stories are the ones that will one day end.


	10. Breaking Point

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foot Turtles AU. Sometimes, you have to choose between letting the darkness devour you, or shaping it to your own will.

They were on a mission when Karai collapsed. She fell to her knees with a moan that Leo managed to hear over everything: the sound of blaring alarms and rattling guns, Mikey's semi-hysterical giggles and Raph's brutal roars, the gurgling of a man trying to breathe around his sword. The sound of her pain, her fear pierced him to the core.

He pulled his blade free and dashed to her side. Karai was curled on her side, clutching her stomach as blood stained the front of her pants. Leo looked her over frantically, but couldn't see a wound. "What happened?" he asked, but all he got was another groan.

"DONNIE!" he screamed, and his brother tossed one more grenade before dashing to their side. "Poison?" Leo asked, trying and failing to sound calm. Donnie shrugged, carefully prying Karai's hands away from her stomach and gently rolling up her shirt so he could get a better look.

They both just stared in shocked silence for a few seconds, the battle fading into the background. There was smoke in the air and he was pretty sure that Raph had stolen someone's machine gun again, but it didn't matter because all Leo could see was the small, distinct bump that was quivering under the surface of Karai's stomach.

Donnie spoke first. "Has you noticed her looking...distended recently?"

Leo shook his head, because while Karai's armor was form-fitting in places, it still covered her up pretty well.

But he'd noticed the way Shredder looked at her, oh yes. The way he watched her train, the way he slipped into her bedroom door for "talks" some nights.

It was the same way Tiger Claw had looked at Leo.

He hadn't wanted to put the pieces together, because that would mean thinking about his own situations as more than a dark little thing at the back of his head. But Karai groaned again, and he realized that that was no longer an option.

Leo carefully slid her his arms under her and straightened up. "We're leaving!" he called.

Mikey looked over at him, confusion on his blood-spattered face. "What about the target?"

 _Shit_. The man they were here for had disappeared. "Mikey, Raph, pursuit. Donnie will cover us while we head back to base." It would have been better to leave Donnie with the others, but Leo wanted to have him nearby in case Karai's situation worsened.

(Her blood was already staining the front of his plastron, how much worse could it get? He didn't want to know)

Raph put the machine gun down, green eye wide with fear. "What about Shredhead? He said--"

"I'll handle Master Shredder," Leo cut him off.

Mikey frowned. "But--"

 _"Go."_ It was a voice that brooked no argument.

Leo sprinted back to base with Karai in his arms, Donnie panting behind them as he tried to keep. Karai felt as light as a feather, and fear for her gave Leo's feet wings.

He wanted to pray to something, but he wasn't sure what. Than his mind flashed for the furry shadow in a robe that he sometimes dreamed about, from his scattered memories before Shredder had taken them in.

He decided to pray to that, because he had nothing else.

"Miscarriage," said the Foot doctor, sounding bored as he loaded Karai onto a gurney and started pulling off her armor. "She'll be fine."

Donnie frowned. "But she doesn't have any sexual partn--" Leo clapped his hand over his brother's mouth, because Donnie _still_ insisted on arguing with doctors after all these years, even when they had all seen what doctors _did_ to disobedient little mutants.

Leo wanted to stay, but he dragged Donnie to the throne room because Shredder would be expecting a mission report. When he got there, Mikey and Raph were already waiting for them, and from the looks on their faces Leo knew that the target had gotten away. _Fuck._

"Leonardo, Donatello," their master purred. "Your brothers have been telling me the most interesting story." Leo wasn't bitter at them for that. Shredder always sniffed out the truth eventually, and holding back would have only made things so much worse.

Donnie scurried into line, while Leo approached the throne, resisting the urge to run away or draw his swords.

The Shredder peered down at him, with that look that always made Leo feeler small than a bug. "They say you permitted the target to escape, in order to tend to a teammate's minor injury." _Minor? Fuck you, old man._ "Do you deny this?"

Leo bowed his head, because if he looked at Oroku Saki for too long he was afraid he'd start screaming. "No, master."

"As my daughter is currently...indisposed, you must take responsibility for your weakness, as well as her own. Do you understand?"

"Hai, master." Mikey was sniffling, and Donnie squeezed his hand.

"Undress."

Leo carefully undid his swords, his belt, his ink-black wrappings, saving his mask for last. That was one of the crueler parts of punishment--the humiliation of being stripped down to nothing, of being reminded that they were little more than animals in the Foot's eyes.

He neatly piled his gear at the corner and went to stand in the center of the room, stretching his arms over his head to grip the metal bar that had been installed in the ceiling. Tiger Claw padded towards him, a whip in one hand.

Out of the corner of his eye, Leo could see Raph vibrating slightly. He prayed, as he did every time, that Raph wouldn't jump up again and try to tackle Tiger Claw the way he had when they were twelve. They'd all been chained to the wall, even Karai, and forced to watch while Raph's eye was carefully scooped out of his head. His brother hadn't spoken for a week afterwards.

Tiger Claw unfolded the whip, a look of what might be pity in his eyes. Leo resisted the urge to spit at him.

The whip cracked across his lower calf, tearing open the faint scars of old wounds to make a fresh, bright one. It burned like fire, as it always did.

He swayed, but did not fall. Nor did he scream. He wouldn't scare his brothers like that, and he wouldn't give Saki and his cronies the satisfaction.

Besides, what he was feeling was nothing like what Karai had gone through tonight.

"One," Leo said, his voice shaking ever so slightly.

"Hold still," Donnie murmured, dabbing at his injuries.

Leo lay on top of his bed and said nothing. Forty blows. Twenty for Karai, and twenty for him. His voice was hoarse from counting.

Few humans would have been able to take that punishment and remain conscious, but mutants were a tough breed. It was one of the few reasons that Saki kept them around.

He'd heal quickly, too, but the marks would always be there. His body was a map of failures, of the punishments he'd taken for himself and the times he'd covered for his brothers.

Someone had brought in his gear while he marched into the bedroom, refusing to be helped. Mikey and Raph had disappeared, as per Leo's orders, probably to go play with the snapping turtle that Raph wasn't supposed to have.

He looked over at Donnie and noticed that his younger brother was crying, tears rolling out from under his black mask. Guilt shot through Leo; Donnie didn't deserve to see him like this, so bloodied and vulnerable. He was supposed to be their big brother, their leader, strong and infallible.

"Hey," he said, resting a hand on Donnie's narrow shoulder. "It's all right."

Donnie looked up at him, eyes glittering wetly. "Is it, though?" he asked.

Before Leo could think of a good answer, the door swung open and Tiger Claw stepped into the room. "Leave," he told Donnie. "Leonardo and I have things to discuss."

Donnie looked confused. "Why--"

"It's all right," Leo said, giving him what he hoped was a believable smile. _Please go_ , he thought desperately. Tiger Claw had never taken him in front of his brothers, but Leo wouldn't put it past him...

Donnie shuffled his feet, than slipped out of the room. Tiger Claw locked the door behind as he left and approached the bed. Leo resisted the urge to shrink away as the big cat drew closer, already taking off his uniform. 

"You did well today, cub," said Tiger Claw, running a feather-soft paw down Leo's face. The touch hurt worse than the whip. "You took your punishment like a man. I am very proud."

Leo bowed his head, feeling the bed creak as Tiger Claw slipped in behind him. "Thank you, Sensei," he said.

"You deserve a reward." Tiger Claw murmured, lifting Leo into his lap and running a soft tongue down the back of his neck. Leo shuddered at the contact, hoping Tiger Claw would mistake the movement for anticipation. His injuries throbbed from being dragged against the blanket, and he knew it was only going to get worse.

Tiger Claw's erection (not barbed, thank God) was pressed again Leo's tail, and one of his hands dipped between Leo's obediently spread legs. Leo let out a little gasp as furry fingers dug at his slit, feeling waves of unwanted pleasure ripple through his body. This was one of the worst parts, maybe even worse than the actual sex; the way that Tiger Claw actually tried to make him enjoy this.

As if a few orgasms would make up for the fact that their encounters left Leo sore and shaking and thinking about using his swords in a way they shouldn't be used.

He wondered if Shredder tried to give Karai pleasure, too, and it made her feel as dirty and helpless as Leo did. The thought made him want to vomit even more.

Instead, he took the lube Tiger Claw handed him and set about prepping himself. If he kept his Sensei happy, the others would be safe. That was the way it worked.

Except it wasn't, was it? His obedience hadn't protected Karai, after all.

She wasn't even the only one. Leo had seen the way Rahzar had started to look at Mikey, his eyes sparkling with a new hunger, the way he had to started to pat the youngest turtle's head or run his claws across his shell. Leo had fended him off with glares, glowers, the occasional precise blow, but he didn't have the staying power of a Shredder or a Tiger Claw. And all Rahzar needed to do was get Mikey alone, just once...

"Sensei," he breathed, as his cock spilled out into the open. "I wanted to talk to you a- _ah-_ about R-rahzar."

"What about him?" Tiger Claw's voice deepened into a growl. His hand tightened on his cock and Leo focused on the pain, letting it ground him.

"He's been expressing a specific...interest in Michelangelo," Leo said quickly, praying that Tiger Claw would understand, obey the implicit deal they had...

"Ah," Tiger Claw's voice relaxed, and he started rubbing Leo's penis again. "Your brother has done well to attract the attention of such a skilled warrior."

Leo's world tilted. "But he's so-- _nngh_ \--young, so _small-ah!"_ he forced out. "Can't, can't you ask Rahzar to--"

"Hush," Tiger Claw ordered, tugging him in for a sloppy kiss. "You were young and small once, as well," he continued, pulling away. "It's good for a cub to have instruction in the matters of the flesh as they develop."

He fondled Leo's cock thoughtfully. "Perhaps I'll speak to Shredder about getting partners for your other brothers, as well, once he's less distracted by the issue of his son."

A small voice in Leo's head asked _son? What son?_ but it was drowned out by silent, white-hot screaming.

"Maybe I'll put some mutagen on that pet Raphael tries to hide, give it an aphrodisiac," Tiger Claw mused, as he tugged Leo's hands away from his loosened entrance and pulled his shell flush against his big furry chest. "That one could always use another lesson in discipline."

 _No no no no no_ and Leo would have howled it, but the air had drained from his lungs.

"You're mine," Tiger Claw whispered, sinking his claws painfully into Leo's shell as he forced his penis inside. "All mine."

Tears streamed against as Leo's face as Tiger Claw thrust inside him, and he lapped them away before the big cat could see.

Leo slunk through Foot Clan headquarters, wrapped in his gear once again. He hurt inside, and all over, but he'd gritted his teeth through worse.

He wasn't surprised to see a light streaming from under Karai's door--she hated the Foot doctors as much as they did, and there was no way she would stay in the infirmary and let them whisper about her after tonight.

Leo slipped in without knocking, the way he had since they were children. Karai lay curled up on her bed, headphones clamped over her dark hair. Leo was sure that he was the only one of his brothers who would ever suspect that she was listening to Taylor Swift--her self-proclaimed "comfort music."

Leo couldn't see her stomach very well, but he didn't doubt that the bump was gone.

He leaned against the wall and waited for her to acknowledge his presence. Eventually she did, throwing off her headphones with a growl. "The fuck do you want?"

Leo blinked at her for a second, because he wasn't sure _why_ he was here, only that he should be. He opened his mouth, hoping the right words would appear, and that might have been a mistake because the first thing he said was "When did he start?"

She twisted around to look at him, eyes wide with shock and fury, before pulling on a mask of confusion. "What?"

Leo took a deep breath and pushed on. "When did Shredder start doing it to you?"

"Doing what, freak?" she snarled, her voice tight and defensive. Her jaw was rigid, her eyes blank the way they got when she took a beating. She was preparing to shut out the world, shut out him, and the sight almost made Leo give up completely.

But than he remembered his aching wounds, and Karai's bloody pants, and Tiger Claw's terrible words, and he sucked in a breath before walking towards her. "What Tiger Claw's been doing to me since I was twelve years old." He tugged at one of his wrappings to reveal the faint bruises that crawled up his thighs before disappearing between his legs.

Her eyes went wide and for a moment the fears crashed down him: what if he was wrong, what if she liked what she had with Shredder, what if she laughed him and told everyone, what if...

And then Karai collapsed back on the pillow with a sob, burying her face in her hands. "Thirteen," she muttered, her voice choked with tears.

She moved a little to the side, and he lay down gingerly besides her, careful of his injuries and making sure not to touch her body. "I didn't know," he said, feeling very old and very young all at once. "I mean, I knew...but I didn't want to know. I didn't even want to know about what was happening to me."

She sniffled. "It was the same for me. I'd see you moving funny, some days, and I just edited it out of my mind."

They lay there without moving for a while, staring at nothing.

When Karai spoke, her voice was distant. "He wants an heir--a human heir. A _boy_." The last word was tinged with disgust.

Leo blinked, remembering what Tiger Claw had said about Shredder and sons. _Oh,_ he thought, but he didn't say anything because there was nothing he could say.

"I didn't even know I was pregnant," she said. "I mean, I _knew,_ but I kept telling myself I was just sick and I sort of believed it. And than...he visited me in the infirmary, told me that we would 'try again' when I was better. He said that he had faith I would give him a strong son."

Tears dripped down Leo's face, landing hot and damp on her shoulder. Karai twitched at the contact, than turned around to her face him, carefully wrapping her arms around his shell and pressing her face to his plastron. "Sometimes," she murmured. "I wish Hamato Yoshi had killed me with my mother."

"I know the feeling," Leo said, quietly.

For a while they sobbed together, crying for themselves and each other. Their tears formed a small pool in the hollow between their heads.

Afterwards, there was silence. And than Leo said the words that would tip them over the edge, but he didn't care because living in the Foot Clan was breaking him into a thousand little pieces and he was tired of it:

"Are you going back to the infirmary tomorrow?"

She looked over at him, genuinely confused this time. "Yeah. Why?"

"They use paralytics sometimes, when they can't be bothered with anesthesia," Leo explained, wincing at the memory. "They trust you more than us; if you could take some and a syringe, they'd never accuse Shredder's daughter of stealing..."

Karai was still staring at him; she could probably figure it out by now, but she would make him say it. So he did. "We can take down Shredder and Tiger Claw, while they're vulnerable, and kill them slowly for everything they've done."

She stiffened, pulling away from him. "Are you _insane?_ " she whispered. "They're _Shredder_ and _Tiger Claw_ , we can't just--"

"It won't be a straight fight," Leo said, feeling a little amazed at how cold his voice was. "Nobody expects their sex toys to stab them with a needle. They think we're broken, obedient little _cubs_." He spat out the last word.

Karai shook her head. "He's my _father_ ," she said. "He _raised_ you..."

"Are you saying that to convince me or yourself?" he asked.

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Leo leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "Tiger Claw wants to make more mutants, to rape my brothers," he said stiffly. "I'm going to kill him, and even if I get away with it Shredder will still make our lives a living hell. I don't know if you're in or not, but I'm doing it either way."

There was another moment of silence, and than Karai squeezed his hand. "Okay," she said.

She leaned over and planted a kiss on his lips, whisper-soft and so much sweeter than anything Tiger Claw could give. "And than we'll rule," she whispered, her eyes glittering with a light like burning steel. "All of us, together, like a family should." She flicked off the light and rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

They lay in the dark together, making plans for how they would burn the old order down.

Outside, the city buzzed and hummed to itself, waiting for its new masters to rise.


	11. Hit Me With Your Best Shot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karai is free, but she is not the brain worms' last victim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from the song by Pat Benatar

An arrow hurtled out of the darkness and Karai leapt to the side, feeling a _whoosh_ as it ruffled her hair. Leo nocked another arrow and spun, white eyes scanning the shadows from behind his black mask.

"Come on, Karai," he called. His voice was gently chiding, as if it was the good old days and he was mildly ticked at her for kidnapping him again. As if all of this was _her_ fault.

And in a sick way, it was. Leo had disappeared trying to find her, after she'd coughed up the brain worm and gone crazy (again). His brothers had torn the sewers apart looking for him, only to stumble on her instead.

They'd headed back to the lair and found it in flames, with Footbots crawling through the wreckage. Splinter had staggered out of the inferno trying to keep his guts from falling out, an arrow in his shoulder and Leo's name on his lips.

Karai had taken charge, and everyone had been too shell-shocked to resist. April was using her powers to hold Splinter together while Donnie tried to stitch him up, so she'd sent them to find a safe place, one that Leo wouldn't know, with Casey and Mikey providing protection.

Then she and Raph had gone to head Leo's forces off, only for Raph to collapse after being just _grazed_ by one of those fucking arrows. Leo was standing between her and Raph's limp form; Karai wasn't sure if he was dead or alive.

"Please?" Leo asked, and his voice seemed so _sad_ , almost frightened. "I'm not going to hurt you, I swear. I just want to talk."

Karai gritted her teeth and slunk across a pipe, trying to find a good spot to leap. If she misjudged and he caught her in midair, it was over.

It might be over for Leo already, anyway. _Third-generation brain worm,_ Donnie had muttered, eyes glassy and hands slick with his father's blood. Meaning that they might have finally figured out how to permanently screw one of those things in someone's head, or make it so that taking it out would kill him.

 _Worry about that later. Focus on taking him down now._ Leo had his mantra, so she couldn't disable him with her venom. And if his swords were covered in the same stuff as those arrows...all it would take was a single cut.

Another arrow hissed passed her leg, and Karai nearly fell off the beam.

"Father misses you," Leo said. Ah, yes, that was another lovely little trick of the worm. Karai resisted the urge to give away her position by screaming _That shit heel is no one's father!_

She'd been where Leo was, after all (and yes, she was just drowning in the exquisite fucking irony of their reversed positions). When you had a worm in your head, you existed solely to carry out the Shredder's orders. Rebellious thoughts weren't ignored; they just didn't exist. No amount of begging or explaining would change Leo's mind.

Only now it looked like she was going to have to try anyway because he was backing up, eyes still fixed in the general area of her position. He slung his bow back over his shoulder and pulled out a knife, tracing it across Raph's face.

"I was hoping to bring him back with us, return him to his rightful post." Leo called, sounding thoughtful. "But I suppose he'll be just as useful with just one eye."

The blade gleamed against Raph's cheekbone. He wouldn't, would he?

He would. The protective instincts had been carved out of him.

The smart thing, Karai knew would be to hold still until she had a chance to slink away. An equally smart move would be to wait until Leo was busy mutilating Raph and tackle him then.

But she couldn't let that happen to Raph, and she couldn't let Leo do that to himself. If--when--they fixed him, what he'd done to Splinter would torment him enough.

So, because mutation had made her soft or the worm had fried her logic center, Karai sucked in a breath and jumped into the light.

Leo rose, putting the knife away as he rested his hands on the swords at his hips. "Hi, Karai," he said, smiling broadly. His voice was soft, like she was a horse or kitten he didn't want to startle. "I don't want to fight."

"Me neither, but life's a bitch sometimes," she replied, drawing her own sword.

"You're sick," he said, and God he sounded as desperate and determined and _hopeful_ as he had when he was trying to convince her that Splinter was her real father. "Come home, please, and let us help you. Father's not mad, I promise."

"Shredder's always mad," she growled, lunging for him. "And the Foot's not my home anymore."

Leo leaned gracefully out of the way and drew his swords, looking regretful. "We love you, Karai," he told her, a note of pleading in his voice. "You don't have to go it alone."

She gritted her teeth, trying to ignore him as their blades clashed and clanged.

"Do really think you're safe with the rat?" he asked. "Sure, he may be nice now, but he'll expect too much, push you too far. It's how he works. And the moment you can't measure up...." Their swords locked, their muscles straining and twitching. "He'll break you and toss you away like trash. That's what he did to me."

Unbidden, her eyes darted to the scars adorning his knee. "Splinter didn't do that to you," she said, knowing that he wouldn't believe her and unable to stop herself. "Shredder did."

Leo raised an eye ridge. "How do you know? You weren't there."

"I wasn't," she admitted, spinning to the right as she twisted a sword out of his hands and kicked it away. "I wasn't, and I am so sorry, Leo. But I'm here now."

"I forgive you," Leo said, giving her a beatific smile. He charged, sending her stumbling backwards.

Karai forced herself to focus on his sword, not on his terrible white eyes or that sad little smile. "I'm not going to be Shredder's slave, not ever again," she hissed. "So either kill me or surrender, because that's the only way this can end."

Leo just clucked his tongue and dragged his blade down her own, towards her fingers, not seeming to notice when her own sword tore open his arm. She had to drop her weapon before he could cut her and hopped away, letting her hands morph into snake heads.

His face seemed to brighten at the sight. "I always loved those," he said wistfully. "Tell me, did Splinter try to convince you that they were ugly? That you needed to get rid of them?"

She didn't know what to say to that, so she just tensed and charged. One set of fangs locked around his remaining sword, but Leo dropped it and planted his hands on her shoulders as he launched himself into the pipes overhead, sending her crashing to her knees.

Karai lurched upright, blinking in confusion. _Why would he--_

_Oh, shit._

She threw herself gracelessly to the side as an arrow zipped down and buried itself in the concrete. Karai jumped towards her feet and darted for the nearest wall, zigging and zagging like a maniac while Leo rained shots down around her. If she could get up there, pull him into close combat again...

Her hands touched the wall just as an arrow drew a line of fire across her shoulder. _Fuck fuck fuck._

A wave of sleepiness hit her almost instantly and she stumbled back to the ground, catching herself just before she could face-plant. She sank her teeth into her shoulder, hot blood filling her mouth as she prayed that the pain would keep her awake for a little while longer.

Leo dropped down soundlessly by her side and shook his head. "You didn't have to do that, Karai," he chided, pulling some gauze out of his pocket. "Hold still and I'll clean you up."

She wanted to scream, to punch him, but it took enough effort to stay upright as he gently dabbed at her shoulder. "Just let go, please," he said. "It'll be over soon, and then we'll be a family again."

A part of her wanted to listen to what he said, to give in. She had been fighting for so very long and she was so very tired.

But her anger--for herself, for Leo, for the whole Hamato family--was a fire burning her up from the inside out. So she summoned all over her strength, every bit of venom resistance her snake side had given her, and said, "Yes, we will."

Than her legs shifted into a tail and wrapped around his chest, pinning his arms to his sides, squeezing as hard as she could without breaking his spine.

"Karai?" he gasped. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Saving your ass," she hissed, digging one set of nails into her shoulder and the other into her cheek. The world was getting darker at the edges, but she just poured all her focus onto Leo and the pain.

"You're just hurting yourself," he said, straining against her coils. "I can hold my breath for twenty minutes, Karai. You can't outlast me."

She nodded. "I know," she told him sadly. Than she punched him in the throat. He gasped as the air went out of him with a _whoosh_ and her hands morphed back into human as they shot forward, clapping one hand over his nose while the other clamped his mouth.

Leo's eyes went wide, and her sensitive ears heard his heart speeding up into panic. He shook his head wildly, letting out muffled pleas as he strained against her grip.

"It's going to be all right," Karai told him, willing it to be true. "Donnie's going to fix Splinter, and than he's going to fix you, and everything will be okay. And I'll be there, at your side, every step of the way. Do you understand, Leo? I will never leave you or your family again. I swear on my life."

She'd toppled over at some point, leaving them both lying on the floor. Still, she held on with an iron will. "It's going to be all right," she whispered again: a promise, a prayer, a desperate plea to the fates. "It's going to be all right."

Her eyes slipped closed just as Leo's rolled up in his head and his body went limp. In the distance, she could Raph staggering to his feet with a grunt.


	12. The Future and Other Weird Shit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A family who thought they'd seen everything is confronted by something new.

"I don't understand," says Donnie, peering at his screen.

Hearing those words from someone like his genius sibling is a once-in-a lifetime occurrence, but it's been a day for those so Leo's not worried. "What's the matter?" he asks, even though he suspects he already knows exactly what the problem is.

"You're a male, in a relationship with two females," Donnie says, gesturing at Leo as he sits on the examination table. Leo nods, since this is a fact that's been true for almost two decades and not likely to change anytime soon.

"So," Donnie takes a breath, "How in the fresh fuck are you _pregnant?"_

Leo glances at his toes, then decides he might as well spit it out. "Shini turns into a man sometimes," he admits. "Usually during sex. She refers to her gender identity as 'unrestricted.'"

Donnie stares at him for several seconds. "How come none of you guys ever mentioned this?"

Leo shrugs. "You never asked."

His brother sighs. "Okay, fair point. So, did you guys know that this could happen?"

"Absolutely not. I only figured it out after Karai woke us up in the middle of the night to inform me that I 'smell like baby.'"

"So, maybe it has something to do with your life cycle?" Donnie ponders. "Have you been feeling any differently recently?"

"Maybe," says Leo, tilting his head thoughtfully. "I guess I've been hornier, jumpier, harder to meditate...I think I put the last two down to--you know." He tugs at his wrappings. The weeks surrounding the anniversary of their father's death is a painful period and always will be.

Donnie seems to feel the same, because he changes the subject by saying, "You know, you're taking this remarkably well."

Leo shrugs. "I'm taking it well now. I was hyperventilating and throwing up in the bathroom last night, though--glad to hear I didn't wake you guys up. Karai and Shinigami were freaking out too, but not as badly as me, so they were able to calm me and each other down. Then I went to talk to you while Karai was busy yelling at Shini for knocking me up."

His brother sits down with a groan. "I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to impressed at the scientific potentials or worried about the fact that my brother can lay eggs."

Leo rolls his eyes. "Oh, please. Like this is any weirder than you and April."

"Artemisia was a _mammalian_ birth, thank you very much," Donnie points out. "This is...different." His face darkens for a second. "Are you...are you sure you want to keep it?"

Leo looks down for a few seconds. "I was thinking about that, a lot. I mean, this is still such a dangerous world and whatever I give birth to, I'll--we'll--have to worry about keeping them safe, keeping them _sane_ for the rest of our lives..."

And then he looks back up at Donnie, his eyes bright. "...But the world was a lot worse before and we made it better. And I want to see someone else getting to enjoy that. So yeah, I think I'll keep it."

Donnie nods. "I get that," he says as he turns back to the screen. "You guys thought of any baby names?"

Before Leo can answer, Karai storms into the lab, dragging with Shini with her. "Well?" Karai asks, as they come to a stop in front of Leo.

Shini sighs. "Leo, darling, I'm sorry for getting you pregnant," she says, before shooting a meaningful look at Karai, "even though I had _no idea this was possible because no one in my family has ever had sex with a mutant turtle_ _before_."

Leo bows his head graciously. "I accept your apology."

"Well," Donnie says, pecking at his screen. "Congratulations, guys. It looks like there's three in there, so we're probably going to have to add even more rooms to the Lair."

"Three!" Shini pumps her hand in the air victoriously. "Yes! Yoshi, Shen, and Azula!"

Leo raises an eye ridge. "We are not naming one of our children after a character from _The Last Airbender."_

"Especially not an unredeemed villain," Karai adds.

Shini pouts. "Killjoys."


	13. I've Come To Burn Your Kingdom Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Donnie doesn't survive his attack, Karai comes face to face with Leo's vicious side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title quoted from Florence and the Machine's Seven Devils.
> 
> Not technically Leorai (I honestly don't think their IDW incarnations are straight, although I doubt we'll ever get that confirmed and I just have to dearly hope it won't get denied) but it had to go somewhere.

"He is alive," Kitsune had said when Karai had asked her about the Shredder. "I can feel it in my bones. He is making his way back to us. I will meditate, try to contact him."

So now Karai sits in her chambers, eating dinner and peering out the window, waiting for her grandfather to return. She sent out Koya and Bludgeon to scour the streets, and it's about time fro them to report in again when Leo lands lightly on the balcony. He's wearing a black mask and his eyes are harder and colder than ice chips.

"So, you come crawling back," Karai says lightly, as she reaches for her sword. "What's with the mask? Were you hoping to regain my grandfather's sympathy with a wardrobe choice?"

"I'm wearing this in mourning," he explains. He moves to touch the mask and she sees a purple band tied around his arm.

Karai blinks. "Ah. Donatello." No wonder he looks like that, so empty and dead. If he and his family weren't such insolent little abominations she might have felt sorry for him.

But she's not, so instead she walks toward him, saying, "That must have been quite a sight. Tell me, did you have to scrape him up in a bucket before you could bury him?"

He doesn't react at the words, doesn't even register them. That makes her stomach to go a little cold, because even when he was a member of the Foot Leo could never let her insults pass over him like that.

She pushes the thought away and shifts into a battle stance. "Allow me to put you out of your misery."

Leo doesn't reach for his swords. "I don't want to fight."

She snickers. "Really? All you and your clan of animals know how to do is fight."

Her blade flashes in the candlelight--and then her hands twitch, sending the sword crashing to the ground. Pain blossoms in her stomach, sharper than a thorn and burning brighter than a rose. She staggers, unable to hold back a gasp. "What...what is this?"

"Poison," Leo says casually. "Your grandfather was instructing me in it, back when I was his slave. I still had some in my belt pockets when I left, and I made more." He walked past, into her dining room, and gestured at her table. "You should put better guards in your kitchens."

She stumbles after him, only for her knees to buckle and send her crashing to the carpet. "Coward. Filth. Too frightened to face me in a battle, then, not after Kitsune turned you into a mewling luna--"

"No," he cuts her off, "just not in a mood to fight. I don't have a particular quarrel with you, for once, but things would get easier if you were out of the way." He glances down at her. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me where the rhinoceros and warthog sleep?"

She spits at him, and it plops against his thigh. Leo hums. "That's fine. I'll find them myself."

He taps his shell, and for the first time Karai can see some kind of gun gleaming between his sword hilts. "A friend of ours, a being named Honeycutt, made this a long time ago. He wasn't going to ever let it be used, but, well....Donnie's death had quite an effect on him, same as all of us. It can cut through diamond, and things harder than diamond--we think it can put a dent into those two ridiculous beasts."

"Winning your battles with fancy toys, then?" she spits. "It's as I expected. Your family has no honor, none of you, especially not that backstabber Dona--"

"Honor?" Leo drops to his knees in front of her, close enough for her to claw her eyes out if she could make her limbs work. "Honor is a story for children, a tool for monsters to justify their atrocities. I have lived in the age of honor, Karai, and I know that it's worth nothing.

"When Shredder sent assassins to butcher my family, my mother offered them her body if they would just spare our lives. They gutted her for that, called her dishonorable." Leo shakes his head, looking thoughtful. "The bravest act I've ever seen, and they called it dishonorable.

"Is that what you want from me?" she sneers, although the idea fills her with terror.

"No," Leo says. "It wouldn't serve any purpose."

Karai tips on her side and falls to the floor with a _thunk_ , strands of hair falling over her face. Leo brushes them away and peers down at her. "You know, my brothers thought about taking you hostage. I told them it wouldn't work; your grandfather cares about you, but not that much."

"Liar," she hisses.

"Really? Why else do you think he jumped at the opportunity to replace you?" Leo shrugs. "Personally, I think he should be grateful. You're the one who woke him up and plunged us all into this hell, after all."

"You...will...be...butchered..." she grits out.

"If you thinking about Koya and Bludgeon, they're dead. I decapitated Bludgeon's, then I cut off Koya's wings and kicked her off a building."

He studies her face carefully. "Hmm. No reaction. Well, you were never one to cry over your mutant pets." He gestures to himself. "I doubt Alopex and I received so much as a tear when we ran away."

She wants to snarl a reply, but there are bubbles rising in her throat, burning and choking her.

"They didn't want me going in alone," he continues. "But I didn't want of them getting hurt, not after Donnie. Besides, I know this place by the back of my hand." He smiles. "You really should have killed me when I left.

"Plus, I'm the only one who can kill Kitsune. Mother and I, we dragged her voice out of my head." He taps his skull, his eyes glittering strangely. "Left a pretty decent mess on the way out, between you and me, but it was worth the price. She can't control me anymore."

Karai's world is swirling slowly. It's taking effort to breathe. She forces her gaze to stay locked on him, to keep her body running on the power of pure hate.

"Do you know why I'm telling you all this?" Leo asks, propping his hands on your elbows. "It's because I though, if nothing else, you deserve to know the end of the story. When your grandfather returns home with Stockman--that's where he is, you know, in some half-assed supervillain team-up--we're going to be waiting for him. With our swords, and our gravity weapons, and a rocket launcher, and a death robot whose inventor has been obsessively programming it with kung fu moves to cope with Donnie's death.

"He'll fight, of course. He won't know what else to do, especially after we show him your and Kitsune's heads. I'll make sure to let him know that you died bravely, although I doubt he'll care. And he'll die bravely too, but he'll still die. He might take some more of us with him, but he will die."

She opens her mouth and froth dribbles out. Leo rises to his feet and draws a sword.

"I don't know what you expected to happen," he says, raising the blade overhead. "You treat people like animals to be butchered long enough, and eventually they'll become monsters just to survive."

The blade slashes downward and


	14. The Science Of Being Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The snake doesn't know who she is, doesn't want to remember. But there's someone who refuses to let her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A story from the same universe as "The Art Of Being Okay."

Some days, she forgot herself.

Some days, it was hard being the kuniochi who had human thoughts in a human body. Because that meant she also had to be the little child who cowered from her daddy's fists and harsh words.

It meant she had to be the girl who had grown to look so like her mother that her father decided he could start doing all the things he'd once wanted to do to her mother to her.

It meant she had to be the soldier who discovered one day that she'd spent her whole life fighting a war on the wrong side.

It meant she had to be the woman who'd ripped her first clan out of her life because it had been suffocating her like a tumor, but the hole it left behind occasionally resembled a missing organ.

Some days, it all pushed and pushed and _pushed_ on her until it was better to be the snake.

So she made her way through the streets of New York, eating stray cats and dogs (and the occasional frozen corpse). When she was sleepy, she made her nests in pipes or on sunny rooftops. Anything that bothered the snake could be pumped with poison and torn to shreds, no muss, no fuss. Her heart was shielded by scaly armor and a magical cloak of cold reptilian instincts.

In the distance, she'd hear voices and bare her teeth at them before running away covering her ear slits. Voices had betrayed her far too often. Heat signatures, too, made her scales burn if they were too many of them at once.

The snake was slithering over a dumpster when she realized she was being watched. She twisted around, spitting venom, but it didn't hit anything. Nonetheless, her keen nose could pick up a scent, one that was a peculiar blend of reptile and mammal, as was the heat signature. It was all accompanied by a strong, sure heartbeat, and these things were...familiar?

She shook the thought away. Memories were _bad_. They were razor blades tearing up the inside of her skull.

The snake pressed on, but the scent and heartbeat kept following her. Curiously, it wasn't accompanied by footsteps, or even the rustle of scales on stone. _Ninja are meant to be quiet_ , muttered an unfamiliar voice in the back of her head. She ignored it; that was the woman's voice, and the woman would only get them in trouble.

She picked up her pace, and the presence raced to catch up with her. She was faster than it in this form, but she was hauling more weight and it could cross great distances in leaps and bounds.

The snake would not be hunted, ~~not again.~~ She slowed, feeling a burst of satisfaction as the presence drew nearer, tensing as she prepared to twist around and sink her fangs into its--

An arrow struck the stone besides and above her head _(his shots aren't supposed to be that sloppy_ , the voice whispered). She lurched to a stop, fangs bared to shred the one who would _dare_ chase her, but then she _smelled_ what was on the arrow and her brain stuttered.

It was a strip of black cloth, tied tight, and when she breathed in the scent of eldritch herbs and dark forests she remembered--

_"It's not a date," Shini muttered, smoothing the skirt. "It's an investigative mission, to figure out how I keep getting my ass kicked by a tiny white chick who wears one-piece suits unironically."_

_"Absolutely," ____ replied, passing her a piece of lipstick. "Just try not to cook any babies into being until you've met her dad and seen her naked."_

_Shini stuck out her tongue. "I wish I'd never told you about that."_

She lurched away, because memories memories memories were bad, memories were a father's crushing hands and a mother's empty gaze in a photograph.

 _(April and Shini have a son named Yoshi,_ the woman's voice whispered. _Is that bad?_ and she shoved it away because to be anyone's child was bad, she knew this too).

She sped down an alley, pumping her tail as fast as it could go, but another arrow struck the stone besides her head. This one had a ragged piece of grey cloth tied on to it, smelling of sweat and deodorant and--

_There was blood on Casey's shirt collar, and she passed him a piece of soap to scrub it off. "Fucking stings," he said, rubbing his nose. "Little green bastards will never know how lucky they are, will they?"_

_"Don't be a baby," ___ said, rubbing blood off her sword. "You're acting like it was broken again."_

She spun and threw herself at him ( _why do I know it's a him?)_ but he leapt to the side fast, so fast, only it wasn't that fast at all, just that her head wasn't working clearly from all the images. Before the snake could figure out where he went an arrow thwacked to the ground beside her, wrapped in a white piece of cloth that filled her nostrils with antiseptic, chemicals, and--

_"How did you even get one in my size?" Donnie asked, lifting a massive lab coat out of a tangle of wrapping paper with an expression of confused wonder._

_Casey shrugged. "You can get anything on the Internet."_

_"You do know this is ridiculously impractical?" Donnie sniffed, although his eyes were bright._

_"It's sexy," Casey said, winking._

_"That makes it practical," ___ chimed in._

She lunged for him and he somersaulted out of the way, straddling the opposite wall as he fired again. A woolly sock was carefully tied onto the end, and the snake tried to hold her breath but she couldn't force out the smells of oil and metal, mingling to form--

_"I can't believe you actually knit," ___ said, watching in fascination. "I was sure that Mikey was bullshitting me."_

_"I can do a lot more with these things than just knit," Raph growled, holding up the needles with was probably supposed to be a threatening air._

_"Whatever, Grandma." She smirked. "I bet that Slash would find it just adorable if I got him a picture--"_

_"Don't. You. Dare."_

The next time she lunged, she moved too fast and he lurched backward, toppling off the wall with a _thump._ She slithered after him, even though that irritating voice kept asking, _Why are you_ _fighting?_ The thought slowed her down, so that an arrow pinioned a piece of fluffy cloth to the wall besides her head, one that reeked of candy and cheese and--

 _"Where'd_ _you even get that?" ___ muttered sleepily, watching the edge of the bathrobe trail along the floor as Mikey served breakfast._

_"He stole it," Donnie said, voice devoid of inflection as he stared fixedly at a pot of coffee. "He found it at the farmhouse and brought it home."_

_"Hey, it wasn't like Mr. O'Neil was using it," Mikey pointed out. "It's comfy, and it gives me an air of grace and sophistication. Plus, Mondo likes it."_

_"Mondo likes you in everythin'," Raph said, gazing at his smiley pancakes with an expression of deep thought unique to the hungover._

She watched him fire again, watched him swing the bow deliberately to the side of her head as she advanced. A yellow fragment brushed her nose, pumping her with the scent of flowery conditioner and sunlight--

_"It's okay," April whispered, as ___ buried her face in the other woman's chest. The grocery bags sat piled besides them, and April's eyes were glowing slightly, psychically compelling any passerby who drew near the display to walk in the other direction._

_"It's not," ____ sobbed, shaking. "I can still feel him, he won't get out..."_

_"It's better than it was," April amended, resting her hand on the small of ___'s spine. Soft waves of calm rocked through ____--not enough to make the memories disappear, there was no force on earth that could do that--but enough to make her heart slow just a little._

She growled and knocked the next arrow out of his bow, but the green ribbon tied on the end brushed against one of her snake hands, bringing the smell of marker and crayon and--

_"But where does the egg come from?" Shen asked, lurching onto her toes to get a better look at her two future siblings. The light from the incubator glinted on her hair ribbon, turning it to jade._

_"We wanted to make the family a little bigger, so we made a wish and your grandparents brought them to us." ____ says, stroking her daughter's hair. Her voice is soft and free of sarcasm in a way it never is with anyone else._

Children _. Children are a weakness. How dare you remind me of children._ She knocked him down again, sending arrows tumbling out of the quiver. Her eyes fixed on two arrows, both bearing the same hot pink cloth, smelling of milk and water and--

_"This was a stupid idea," ___ said, gazing down at Pimiko through sleep-crusted eyes as she suckled. "Why did we have three? Why did we even have one? We're not cut out to be parents, we can barely take care of ourselves." She shot a glare at Leo, who was humming as he bounced Celeste on his shoulder. "How the fuck are you taking this so well?"  
_

_"I have three brothers," he said. "They were all too scared to wake up Sensei when they had a nightmare, so they'd go to me instead. I mastered the art of power naps before I was seven."_

_"Showoff," she muttered, running a finger over Pimiko's pink blanket and onto her green brow. Her daughter's eyes flickered, dark brown, a counterpoint to Celeste's silvery-white skin and blue eyes._

Tears were running down her snout and the world was flipping over on itself, so she yanked the bow out of his hands and pinned him down, trying to ground herself. Her fingers snagged in his cloak, and she breathed deep, smelling the oil he used on his swords and the mouthwash he used in the mornings and--

_"Congratulations, you were right," she muttered as they stood back to back, his hood pressing into her hair while ninja gathered around them. "They don't want me to leave."_

_"The Foot Clan is your legacy!" someone yelled. "It is what you were raised for, the source of your power! You would abandon it to scrabble in the dirt with a bunch of filthy animals?!"_

_"The Shredder doesn't deserve a legacy," ___ growled, muscles tensing. "And the only source of my power is myself."_

_"Also, I'm very clean," Leo muttered, and she found herself snickering as the battle began._

They stared down at each other. blue into red, although she could feel her eyes flickering between red and brown. He looked up at her, so _calm_ , and the sight might have infuriated her if her head hadn't been filled with memories of seeming him weeping and angry and terrified and confused and happy and hopelessly in love.

Her brain was ringing with scents. Her scales twitched against his, at the familiar green surface. The memories were drowning her, but at the same time other memories were lifting her up, pulling her out of the dark.

She reached out, and from a distance she watched her hand roll up his sleeve, searching for one last scent buried beneath his. There was a piece of dark cloth tied around his wrist, one that smelled of _everything_ , including--

_"Sometimes, I don't like my own smell," she admitted, tugging at her shirt sleeve. "Sometimes, I can't stand to hear voices, or be near a lot of heat signatures. But sometimes...the smell of other people, it calms me. I think. Given bit by bit."_

_"I'll remember that," he said, leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek._

_She looked at him, brown into blue. "Sometimes, I can't stop myself, and I want to hurt everyone." she whispered, trying to hold back tears. "Sometimes, I want to hurt you."_

_"You've tried to hurt me before," he pointed out. "You're not as good at it as you think you are." He leaned forward, into a kiss. "No matter what happens, I will always love you--_

"Karai."

The word was out of her throat, loaded with soft and sharp meanings, and for now she managed to accept them. She rolled off him and curled up by his side, shedding the snake like the other skin it was. Her hair brushed his face, her scars pressing up against his.

Leo turned to look over at her with a smile. "Welcome back,"

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"It's okay," he said, helping her upright.

"How long was I gone?" she asked, feeling the now-familiar burn of panic in her belly.

"About a day and a half," he said, already starting to gather the arrows.

Karai sighed. Not too good, but a lot better than what things had been like before they'd worked out this weird little system. Once, she'd lost herself for almost a month before waking up in a dumpster, staggering home with a burning shame that no amount of comfort could fix. "The girls?" she asked.

"They're fine," he said. Shen, Celeste, and Pimiko had pretty much accepted the fact that Mommy apparently got "sick" and disappeared every once in a random while, just as they had accepted that Daddy didn't like people sneaking up behind him. They wouldn't be trusting children forever, though, and Karai imagined that they would have to sit through some painful conversations when they were older.

"We need to talk to Donnie about making some kind of gas," she mused as she followed Leo along the trail of arrows. "I can't believe the others keep letting you snip fresh pieces off their clothes."

"They're not," he explained, placing the last few arrows back in his quiver. "I did it while they were sleeping."

She raised an eyebrow. "Isn't that an abuse of your leaderly privileges?"

"I have leaderly privileges? I thought we'd morphed into a semi-anarchic democracy at this point," Leo said, slinging the quiver back over his shoulder. He shot her an impish grin, eyes twinkling in the starlight. "Race you home?"

She stared at him. "Seriously?"

"What? I've been chasing you around New York for hours, you should get to experience that from the other side." He shifted into a starter's position. "Unless you're too tired..."

"Not on your life," she hissed, and Leo smirked before dashing off into the dark, cloak fluttering in the moonlight. She was after him like a shot, the wind whipping through her hair.

They sprinted above the dark streets of New York City, trading taunts and laughter under the cold moon, and for a brief time Karai's only memories were good ones.


	15. Dancing In Crimson

The first time Leo kills a man, he barely notices. He just rips his sword out of his chest and moves on to the next one. It's only when he's over, when all the Purple Dragons are dead, that he realizes he's standing on top of a mountain of corpses, and five of them died at his own hand. He's covered from head to toe in blood--some of it hot and fresh, some of it already starting to crust.

He throws up, blushing as he does so--what will Karai and Shinigami think? When he glances at them, they're not looking at him, and he's not sure whether it's good or bad.

The shaking starts as they slink back to their "base," a tiny apartment Karai bought with some of Saki's money that she didn't burn. He manages not to fall when they leap between the roofs, but only barely. He clamps his jaw shut to keep his teeth from chattering, wishing he had pockets to hide his shaking hands.

Shini manages to get herself clean with a snap on her fingers and says that she's going to bed. When Leo tries to say good night, all that comes out is a strangled squeak. Karai shoots him a look and he finds himself blushing worse than ever.

"Here," she says, taking his hand and leading him into the bathroom. "Let's get cleaned up." Leo wants to ask why they need to shower at the same time, but he's afraid of making that embarrassing squeak again so he doesn't say anything. He stands in the backward, awkward and stiff, as she gets the hot water running.

She slips out of her bloodstained armor in a businesslike fashion, like he's not even there, and Leo plants his gaze on the tile. "Hey," she says, lifting his chin. "It's fine." He focuses on her eyes, so deep and dark and kinder than he's ever seen them, because he's worried that if he looks at her body for too long he might slip into a state of catatonia.

He tries to remove his own things, but his hands are shaking too much. "I've got it," she says, and his mind goes still as her hands reach behind him to gently unclasp his belt. Her fingers dart over his body, feather-light and wonderfully terrifying.

Once they're both naked, he obediently follows her into the shower. The water is so wonderfully warm on his scales, even if his insides still feel cold. For a moment they simply stand there, motionless, letting the blood trickles down their bodies and melt into a pink froth around their feet.

Karai tells him to turn around while she scrubs the blood from his shell. As she works, she tells him about her first kill, done when she was seven years old. The Shredder beat her until she agreed to run through her sword through the man shackled to a wall--a nobody, a beggar snatched off the streets for her to "practice" on. Afterwards, he stroked her hair while she shook and sobbed. It was a solid night before she finally stopped trembling.

"I'm sorry," Leo breathes, tears trickling down his cheeks.

"It's all right," Karai assures him. "I just want to let you know that there's no shame in reacting the way you did, your first time. If you had done otherwise, I wouldn't have thought you were a person."

"But I'm not a person," he says, frowning.

"I didn't say you were human," she replies. "I said you were a person." He's still digesting that when she slipped the brush under the edge of his shell and ever so slightly touched the bristles to his tail.

"Aah!" He lurches forward, bracing himself against the tiled wall. Karai giggles at the sound. "I was wondering what would happen." She sets the brush aside and leans up against him, pressing her breasts against his slick shell. Leo churrs at the contact, unable to help himself, then blushes worse than ever before.

"What a lovely sound." She reaches out, running a soft hand down his plastron before touching the bulge between his legs. "Is that where you keep it?" He nods, trying to decide whether he's about to explode from joy or embarrassment.

"Can I see?" she asks. He hesitates, and she plants a soft kiss on his neck. "It's all right, Leo. It's just us. If I was going to hurt you, I would have done it long ago."

She's not lying there, so he lets himself drop down. He starts to turn around, but she says, "No, hold still. I like seeing you this way."

He tenses as she reaches out, only to feel his knees go weak as her hand wraps around his length. "Nnnh..." He lets out a muffled cry, pressing his head against the tile.

"No," she says, tightening her grip. "Ninja have to be silent enough as it is. I want to hear your voice, Leo."

So that's just what he gives her, letting the cries and churrs ring out of his throat without holding back. She works one hand between his legs and the other between her own, if the sighs she's making are any indicator. He lets himself shake to pieces in her hands, shedding the shame and guilt and trauma of what's he done in the form of cum and tears.

For a few seconds, the world is made up with hot water streaked with red and the hands of a deadly creature that loves him.

Afterwards, they sit in the tub, drifting on the post-orgasm high. Leo rests his head in her bare lap, watching as Karai brushes her hair. He feels happy, peaceful, content.

It doesn't last, of course. Eventually she puts down the brush and asks, "Where'd you get that? The burn on your wrist?"

Leo winces at the memory, hands twitching to cover the mark that's usually hidden by his wrappings. "We were eight," he says, his voice distant and his eyes stilted. "Donnie wandered off while Father left me in charge and...he didn't want it happening again." He hopes she doesn't say that it's awful, because then he'll have to defend his father, and he's not in the mood to lie to himself or her tonight.

Instead, Karai just shrugs. "My father never left permanent marks on me," she explains. "He didn't want to risk making me unappealing to my targets."

Leo blinks, then his eyes widen as he understands. "...Oh."

"He only marked me once," Karai says, pointing to her back. "A rose, tattooed on my shoulder blade. I didn't want it, but he didn't give me a choice. He said I was the rose of the clan: beautiful, but hiding sharp thorns." She shrugs. "Roses are short-lived and get ripped up by everyone. I'm not a rose."

"Then what are you?" he asks, sitting up to look at her.

Karai smirks. "Isn't it obvious? I'm a demon," she pulls him into a kiss, "just like you."

The second time they wash blood off together, Karai is slick with the Shredder's guts. Oroku Saki learned the hard way about what it means to mistake a demon for a rose; Karai left his body to burn the way her mother's had.

Leo helps her limp through the lair, feeling everyone's eyes on them. Splinter looks slightly miffed that he didn't get a chance to kill Shredder himself, while the others have undisguised looks of horror in their eyes. His family has been through hell, they've seen things that would drive lesser adolescents mad, but none of them have ever killed before. None except Leo.

He wonders if they understand why he doesn't flinch at contact with Karai's bloodstained body, if they suspect what he became in the brief time he was away from them. He wonders if he cares.

No one offers to help Karai clean up, so Leo leads her into the bathroom and draws a warm bath. He helps Karai remove her clothes, stiff and slick with the Shredder's remains. She tells him about what it felt like to stab him seventeen times, what his blood tasted like as it spurred into his mouth. "Do you think Tang Shen would have been proud of me?" she asks, and Leo has no answer.

After she lowers herself into the tub, Karai glances up at him and says, "Well? Come on." He glances at the door. "They're going to suspect something's up no matter what you do," she points out. Leo sighs and nods before slipping off his gear and getting in with her.

He carefully scrubs her clean, although the feeling of her bare skin on his still makes him quiver a little, a fact that makes her smirk. When he feels the urge to drop down, he does without bothering to worry first. Her father's remains pour into the water around them, forming a soft red cloud.

Karai runs a soft hand down at his face, only for her fingers to shift and meld into a snake's head. He jolts. "What?"

"It's okay," Karai whispered. The rest of her is still human; the snake is running down his torso, tickling and lapping at his plastron. "I just want to try something new, to take care of you like you're taking care of me. You trust me, don't you?"

He does, he realizes. He trusts her more than he trusts anyone, even his brothers, because she's seen exactly what he's capable of and has no fear. So when the snake head darts between his legs and wriggles behind his tail, he lets himself relax into the sensation. When it slips inside him, he leans forward and pours a soft, deep groan into Karai's mouth.

When she finally guides him inside her, the groan builds into a scream. She pinches the base of his dick between gentle fingers, preventing him from coming too early as they rock together, the crimson water sloshing into a burning red storm.

He knows that his family members can hear them fucking, he knows that his brothers won't be able to understand why he could associate with someone who's done what Karai's done, he knows that his father will be disappointed in him. All these things which would have crippled him once upon a time, but now...Leo's had a taste of what it's like not worry about being the perfect son, the flawless brother and leader, and he wants more of that.

Afterwards, they float together, skin pressed up against scale. "What are you going to do now?" he finally asks.

"What you're always supposed to do when you kill the king," she murmurs. "Take the throne." She twists around so that their eyes lock. "And you...what are you going to do?"

"Well, know that Shredder's finally gone, we--"

"No," she says, shaking her head firmly. "Not we. You. What are you going to do?"

Leo blinks. "I...I don't know," he admits.

But he has a few ideas.

Taking a throne is harder than it sounds, especially since Tiger Claw has already claimed it for himself. Splinter refuses to offer his help, not understanding why his daughter won't come live under his wing. He forbids his children to get involved.

So Leo has to sneak out when he wants to go help Karai and Shini (and an angry mutant fox named Alopex) wreak havoc. And he discovers that the more he gets used to leaving a trail of blood and fire in his wake, the more he enjoys it.

Inevitably, he is caught. Inevitably, there's a big blowup that has the whole family gathered in the room in the middle of the night. Inevitably, he is given the option to give up on this "foolishness" and do what is expected of him. The thought is incredibly tempting, so much so that he almost finds himself bowing to his father on instinct.

Except...he has been doing what is expected of him for almost twenty years. It has grown very, very tiring.

"I love you," he says to his family. "I will never stop loving you, and I will fight for you whenever you need it.But you're all more than capable of taking care of yourselves by now. You don't need me to help raise you anymore." Someone tries to claim that he never helped raise them, but Leo plows on.

"What I'm doing makes me happier than I have ever been as leader. Just because family sticks together doesn't mean you have to live your whole life for it. Besides, I was designed for conflict, and life at Karai's side will bring enough conflict to keep me satisfied forever." He hefts his knapsack, full of the few things he considered worth taking. "I'll come visit in about a week, if anyone wants to see me."

"So, you're gonna run away? Be a fucking criminal?" Raph sputters.

Leo stares. "We're not human. Why should we play by their rules?"

There's a fight, of course. Raph and Splinter don't want him to go, and aren't shy about getting physical about it. Donnie and Mikey, though...Leo thinks they might understand, one day.

When he finally shows up at Karai's headquarters, he's covered in blood yet again, although there's less of it than there's been in the past. Sensei left a few cuts, and Raph ended up bloodying his nose. Some of their blood is also on him, although he didn't have to seriously injure either of them. His intention was to leave, after all, not win, and deep down they both knew there was no real way to stop him.

Karai cleans him up in the bathroom, stitched his wounds and dabbing ice on his bruises, while he tells her what happened. "Do you think Raph will be a problem?" she asks, planting a soft kiss on his forehead.

Leo shakes his head. "He blusters a lot, but I think he's tired of fighting. He's fit for brawls, not wars. If we toss him a mugger or rapist once in a while I think it'll be okay."

"Good." Karai gives him another kiss, this one on the lips. "I love you, Leonardo."

"I love you, Karai." They don't use last names. They don't need them, not with each other.

In her bedroom--their bedroom, now--his hands are rock steady when they touch her. Some of his wounds leak droplets of blood as they roll around the sheets, staining them both as they sink sharp teeth into each other's flesh. Leo relishes the pain and pleasure equally. When they scream for each other, he doesn't even think about who might hear.

Afterwards, while Karai sleeps, Leo takes his filthy blue mask and throws it in the trash. Black was always more his color, anyway.


	16. After The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the hero and the villain fall together, how do you pick up the pieces?

Someone was standing by her bed. She could hear their breathing, accompanied by odd little sniffling sounds. Karai cracked her eyes open and saw Donnie looming over her, half and half out of a bizarre set of homemade armor. Tears were glittering in his eyes, soaking his black mask and sending paint dribbling down his cheeks.

"Leo's dead," he told her. "He sacrificed himself to stop the Shredder. They fell out of the sky together." Then he turned away and leapt back out the window without another word. 

Karai stared at nothing for a few minutes, her mind blank with shock. Memories crept in--memories of a blue-eyed boy who loved the stars, who quoted dorky tv shows in his sleep and tucked away crippling paranoia behind a broad smile, who'd believed that she could be redeemed when no one else had.

She started screaming, and couldn't stop until long after the nurses rushed in. They assumed it was a flashback to her attack, and she decided to let them believe that.

Some time later Karai was staring at the ceiling, a mental image of Leo's body striking hard concrete playing through her head in an endless loop, when she heard voices from down the hall. People were shouting, barking at each other to turn up the TV, their voices rising with fear and panic. Someone made a comparison to 9/11. She could hear gurneys squealing, doctors chattering as new patients were brought through the halls.

Karai found her phone and turned it on. It wasn't long before she found what she looking for; the headquarters of Oroku Industries, not to mention a host of "random" buildings that she knew were Foot Clan centers of power, had been blown up. Some passerby had been injured, although there had been no fatalities outside the vicinity of each structure. Inside, however, there were not survivors.

People were wondering which terrorist group was responsible for this, debating about whether it was foreign or homegrown. Karai wondered how Donnie felt about having his work discussed by the general public for the first time, even in such an...awkward medium.

The last of the clan that was supposed to be her legacy had been wiped from the earth, and Karai found that she didn't really care. 

Shinigami came by, smirking at orderlies from underneath her black hat. She tugged April behind her, to Karai's surprise, and the two girls held hands when they thought Karai wasn't looking. She found herself instinctively smirking at the sight, although inside she still felt empty and cold.

As Shinigami chattered about meaningless things, trying and failing to distract them, Karai noticed how tired April looked, her hair pulled out of its usual neat ponytail to hang limp and messy around her face. There was a fading bruise on her cheek, and her eyes were reddened from crying.

"How are the guys doing?" Karai asked. She saw the way the others tensed at the mention of Leo's brothers, and knew things had gone wrong even before April spoke: "We're...we're not talking right now." She worried her hands in her lap, refusing to meet Karai's eyes. "They're mad because," she sucked in a breath, "because I didn't catch...him."

Karai stared. _Oh._

"I tried!" said April, looking up at Karai with a look of panic. "I tried, but...but there was so much noise, I couldn't focus--and I could feel how badly he was already hurt, but..." she sighed, rubbing her head. "I should have caught him."

"You did your best," Shini reassured, rubbing her back, her voice gentle in a way that Karai had rarely heard it.

April sighed. "Raph hit me," she confessed. "Then Casey hit Raph, and then we were all fighting, and Mikey was sobbing over...and I just had to get away, before things got worse." She shrugged. "I think Casey's pissed that I left him. I haven't seen him much. He doesn't like it when I try to come over."

She hunched over, fresh tears trickling down her face. "I'm sorry," April said quietly. "I'm so sorry."

Karai shrugged. "It's fine." And it really was. April had fucked up, sure, but not nearly as badly as Karai. She'd been there, at least. She hadn't let herself get her ass kicked by wandering into a trap, leaving her clan without an extra sword.

She wondered the guilt would have been worse or better if she'd actually been there. She suspected it really didn't make much difference either way. "We all fucked up," she said, because they had. They'd failed Leo in his hour of need, and they'd have to live with that.

Karai's next visitor came in the middle of the night, stirring her awake with his warm presence. She turned to see Raph standing over her bed, flipping a sai between his fingers, green eyes glowing in the dim light. He smelled faintly of booze, but his eyes were sharp and clear. There was something in them she'd never seen from any of the turtles, something dark and empty.

For a moment they stared at each other as the sai twitched in his hands. Flip. Flip. Flip.

Finally, Karai got sick of the silence and spoke. "Are you here to kill me?"

Raph stopped flipping the sai and narrowed his eyes, as if she'd given him an important logic problem. "Do you want to die?"

Karai shrugged, as much as the wires of her hospital bed would let her. "I don't know." It was true. After all, every second she spent in a world without Splinter--without _Leo_ \--felt painful. Not to mention the fact that with the death of Shredder, she'd pretty lost her purpose in life. Karai's world had been built around revenge, on Splinter or on Shredder. What was she without that, now that she didn't even have a clan to rule?

"How are the others doing?" she asked, not sure what else to say.

Raph shrugged. "Mikey hasn't come out of his room, won't let anyone in except Mondo. We think they're pity-fucking, but that stupid fucking gecko clams up whenever I try to talk to him. It turns out you actually can be too dumb to appreciate threats."

He looked at his blade thoughtfully. "Donnie's high most of the time, too. He's been brewing acid in his lab. Says he got fed up with this level of existence and wanted to try another one."

Her eyes widened with surprise before she can stop herself, and Raph broke into laughter at the sight. "Shocked, Princess? You'd think we'd sit around mourning properly like good little boys? After _both_ primary sources of our impulse control had to be scraped off the pavement?" He rolled his eyes. "As if. I woke up covered in my own piss and shit this morning; it was the nicest I'd felt in days."

Raph dropped down onto the mattress, bouncing like a child. "Tell me, Princess," he said, twirling the knife around his fingers again. "What's your plan, after the good doctors have kissed you better? You gonna come back to the lair, whip us into shape? Be our big, bad leader, now that you don't have anyone else to bark orders at?"

Karai tensed at the words, but she forced herself to sound calm. "What do you want to me do, then?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "Let you wake up covered in your own piss and shit again?"

"What I want," Raph said, leaning forward. "Is someone who won't skip out on us, won't run off to Japan or wherever the fuck you go when you leave. Someone who won't play with our heads the way you did with Leo."

Hearing his name made her flinch; the accusation made her snarl, "I never--"

"Left?" Raph finished. "You ran away after you got mutated, you _left_ him and Shredder broke him into bits. You ran away when we tried to help you after we came back to New York. You ran away after Splinter freed you--we thought you were _dead_ , I'd find Leo crying about you in corners. And then you came back with that crazy fucking witch and a crazy plan to take over the city, acting like you didn't even _care._ And Leo forgave you, every time, no matter how roughed up he was afterwards."

Karai shook her head. "Shredder--he _hurt_ me," she tried to explain. "I was broken, I wasn't safe around you guys. Leo understood that." _He did_ _. He had to._

"Maybe he did, maybe he didn't," Raph said. "But I don't, and I don't _want_ to."

"And if the others want me back?" Karai asked quietly. "Will you let me stay?" She glanced at his sai. "Or are you here to make sure that's never an issue?"

Raph stared at her for several seconds, jaw twitching. When he finally spoke, he said, "Did you fuck him?"

Karai blinked, startled by the sudden turn the conversation had taken. "Why do you care?"

He shrugged, eyes darting. "Wondering how you managed ta string him along for so long, that's all."

She didn't believe him, but all she said in reply was, "Yeah. A few times."

They'd usually done it as her place; he'd been terrified of one of his brothers walking in on them (so had Karai, if she was honest with herself). He'd been so nervous the first time, and she'd been nervous, too--it had been her first time taking someone's virginity--although she hoped that she'd hidden it well. Later on he'd grown more confident, even managing to surprise her from time to time.

The sounds he'd made had been so beautiful, so strange. She'd never hear them again.

"Did you love him?" Raph asked.

"Yes," Karai replied, without hesitation. She could see from his face that he didn't believe her, but she didn't care. "Did you?"

"He was my brother," Raph said, confused.

"No." She propped herself up on the pillows so she could look into his eyes. "Did you _love_ him?"

Raph's eyes widened with shock, then he threw on a mask of disgust and pulled away from her. "He was my _brother."_

"And I was his sister--technically."

He shook his head. "Why the fuck would you ever think something like that?"

Karai shrugged. "That question you just asked. How protective you are, the way you quarreled like an old married couple. How much you hated me from the start, even more than April and I actually tried to _kill_ her. How you looked at him when you thought no one else was loo--"

The sai blurred in his hands and slammed into the wall besides her head. Raph was staring at her, shoulders heaving.

Karai blinked, forcing the fear down. "Uncalled for," she said, doing her best to sound relaxed without appearing contemptuous.

Raph's hand flexed on his other sai, but then he slumped down on himself with a soft groan. "You...you know how he was," he said quietly.

Karai nodded, because she knew exactly how Leonardo was. Cunning. Arrogant. A kiss-up. Controlling. Weird. Brave. Dorky. Kind. Generous. Fierce, Broken. Beautiful. Loyal. Loving. Not to mention a lot sexier than he realized.

"We had a thing, when we were younger," said Raph, and Karai started in surprise. "It wasn't much--just a few kisses and touches here or there. But then we'd always be fighting, and we couldn't be nice to each other at the same time, not like that. We pulled away. both of us. I think he was afraid of hurting me. I know I was."

"I was afraid of hurting him, too," Karai admitted. "I did hurt him, sometimes, even if I didn't mean to."

Raph shifted upright at the words and looked at her, glare turned on once again. "You think we'll be able to bond over that? How much we fucked up with my brother, how much we miss him? Compare notes, maybe?"

Karai shook her head. "No. But I think if you really wanted me dead, you wouldn't have stuck around so long."

"Maybe. Or maybe I'm just trying to see if I can actually something worthwhile out of you, for once, before you stop being a problem." He ran his thumb down the smooth edge of the sai, not looking at her. "If I let you live, what would you do? Where would you go, after you got out of this dump?"

Karai shrugged, careful not to look at the knife. "I'm not sure. I haven't spent a lot of time thinking ahead."

"Well, there's no time like the present." He studied his reflection in the blade, and she resisted the urge to tell him that his posturing was ridiculous.

Instead, she said, "I don't know...probably go home, break into Mikey's room, get chased out again and again until I manage to wear him down enough to talk." That sounded like something Leo would do, although she wasn't sure. "Destroy Donnie's drug-making shit until he gets fed up or starts building a bomb, pour all your booze down the drain. Force you guys to talk to April."

"We don't want ta talk to--"

"Because she didn't save him?" Karai raised an eyebrow. "Newflash, neither did you. Neither did I. We'll all to have to live with that, no matter how much what we tell ourselves about "circumstances beyond our control" or shit like that. Doesn't mean we have to tear each other apart in the process."

He snorted. "That's rich, coming from you."

"I know," Karai replied. "I was a pathological lone wolf, except for Shini, because Shredder ripped my soul apart. But now my biological father is dead, my adopted father is dead, the boy I loved is dead. I don't want any more dead. I'll sit through all the self-evaluation and," she gave a mock shudder, "self-improvement I can stand just to make sure that _something_ changes."

"That was a hell of a speech, Princess," Raph said, his voice almost too quiet to make out the words. She didn't know what he was feeling. He picked up the sai and held it in front of his face. "Now that you've given me all those nice suggestions about how to dig the others out of their little pits--if I wanted to waste the effort, which I might not--why should I keep you around?

"And don't say that's not what Leo and Splinter would have wanted, because they're dead. They're not here. We are. So..." He leaned across her, careful not to touch her injuries, but also careful not to give her any room to lunge upwards and attack him. The blade hovered a few inches from her throat, questioning.

Raph's words were cold, but his hands were trembling and his voice shook with what might be terror. His eyes were big, desperate. _Give me_ _a reason to spare you_ , they begged. _Give me a reason to keep trying, to go on._

For a moment, Karai wasn't sure if she had one. Raph's sai might be a quick, painless way to end what felt like a very long, very painful life. She had suffered and fought and run and tried so hard, and in the end she had still lost so much. There was a searing agony in her heart and a deep tiredness in her bones. Even if it got better one day, she would always be damaged, always be fragile.

But unlike Raph, she did believe in ghosts. And she knew that Tang Shen, Splinter, Leo--especially Leo--would be incredulous to think that _Karai_ of all people would give up without a fight, that she would render her sacrifices and theirs meaningless.

So she looked Raph in the eyes and said, "Because you need me. You want to save your brothers, save yourself, but it's an impossible task to do on your own. I can't be your leader, and I'd never take Leo's place, but I can be your guardian. I can give you the help you need, and I think you need help. And I...I need help, too. We can help each other." A bit of defiance flickered into her expression. "The way Leo wanted."

For a moment Raph's face twisted, lost in a hurricane of emotions. She wondered if the sai would feel cold should it sink into her throat, if she would see Leo on the other side.

Then he hurled down the blade and burst into tears. All facades crumbling down, all avenues to cleansing rage blocked. The dark, empty thing was gone, leaving a broken child in its wake.

And when Karai tried to speak, she felt a sob of relief and sympathy and fresh grief come crawling up her throat, too.

They wept together in the dark, shaking and gasping. "I-I'm sorry," Raph gasped out, curling on her bed in a ball. "I'm so, so sorry."

"I'm sorry, too," Karai murmured. She stroked his head and pretending she was touching Leo.

"I miss h-him," he said, her voice thick and choked. "I m-miss him, so much. It _hurts."_

"It does," she whispered, letting her tears soak the pillow. "It burns like _fire."_

They lay in the dark together, sobbing, until sleep claimed them.

Karai sat on a rooftop overlooking New York City, Leo at her side. The sun was rising in the distance.

"You asshole," she said, struggling to look at him. "I should _gut_ you for leaving like that."

"I know," he said, looking at his feet. "I'm sorry. And I'm sorry that I couldn't get to Raph on time--"

"I'm tired of sorries," she told him, squeezing his hand comfortingly. "And besides, I think it was good for us to...clear the air, you know?" She smirked. "Especially since I got to uncover your sordid romantic history together." Leo dropped his face into his palms with a groan.

"Seriously, though," Karai said. "I think it'll be okay. If not, well...I'll just get to stay here with you."

Leo raised his head and give her one of those adorably righteous looks. "Don't say that, Karai. I want you to live. Not just for them, but for yourself, too."

"I will," she promised, gazing deep into his beautiful blue eyes. "And I'll take care of them, too, I promise. I won't be you, but I can keep them safe and make sure they take of themselves and kick that stupid gecko's ass if he hurts Mikey."

"Thank you," Leo said. He leaned forward, pulling her a gentle kiss. "I love you," he said, his voice a gentle breath in his air. "I should have said that more often."

"I love you, too," she whispered, breathing in his scent like her life depended on it. "I'll miss you."

Then she gave a naughty smile and pushed him on his shell. This was a dream, so in a second she was already naked, except for the loose _Space Heroes_ T-shirt she had once considered buying just to tease him.

Leo raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? With my brother in your bed?"

"Okay, first of all, we both know that came out wrong," Karai said, straddling him. "Second, he's probably slunk out the window already."

She ran a mask tail through her fingers, enjoying soft it felt. "And sure, maybe it's necrophilia, or a wet dream at the very least," he groaned at the words, "but I don't have forever with you. You're going to move on at some point, I know you will."

Leo sighed, giving a small nod. "I think Master Splinter already started," he admitted.

"So," Karai planted a soft kiss on his temple, another on his neck. "I want to take advantage of every second we have. And I know you do, too." He smiled against her lips in response.

His arms came up around her as the golden sunlight caressed them both, promising a new dawn or some such bullshit. Karai didn't really care at the moment.


	17. In The Time Of Unusual Things (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fantasy AU, because I can. Inspired by a TMNT origin AU comic written by someone whose name escapes me.

There is magic in the world. It goes by different names, wears different faces as it employs its will, but it is there. Some it expresses itself as a concrete, manipulable force, such as mutagen. Sometimes the forces at work are less understandable, more random.

Case in point: once upon a time (more specifically, old Japan) a small, old dragon found four eggs floating in a river. He watched as they hatched into tiny, green creatures that resembled some other demons in the land, but at the same time were something new. The dragon understood the value of new things, so he took them home with him and raised them as his own.

The dragon believed in calling things by their proper names, so he watched his children carefully before giving them their titles. He named the boys Brave, Fierce, Clever, and Sweet. He raised them deep within the woods, teaching them how to survive and care for themselves, how to negotiate with some magical creatures and battle others for their survival.

Brave was the eldest, and the name fit him perfectly. He was always the one to face the biggest opponents for his brothers and to tug them into line (despite Fierce's protests) when Father wasn't around.

He was also the one most fascinated with nearby human settlements. They all were, studying the funny, pale little creatures from the safety of the forest. But it was Brave who slipped among, quick and sure as a shadow, to steal the machines Clever was for fascinated with or the delicacies Fierce and Sweet loved to try.

Brave never took anything for himself, except for the occasional text that he would read and return before it got damaged in the next rain. He didn't see think there was anything among the humans worth keeping. Nor did he ever feel compelled to go near the feudal lord's palace, except for toying with the potential challenge to his skill.

The dragon lived for a time, but he was already old when the new creatures arrived in his life. He died peacefully in his sleep, a rare gift for dragons when everyone is so desperate to slay them, and his sons wept over his body as they buried it in the woods.

Brave was now the one in charge of keeping his siblings safe and secret, a task he carried out as best as he knew how. For a time they were safe, even happy, building friendships with the strange beings that inhabited the woods or even a few very odd humans who lived on society's edge.

But then came a particularly long winter, when he had to visit the human's villages more and more often just to keep his family decently fed. Even if he was never seen, local humans still noticed all the missing food, and started leading investigations into the woods. Clever's traps, which were meant to simply scare them away, starting drawing their ire instead.

It all came back to the local lord, a son of the Oroku clan, who believed that all unusual creatures were demonic beasts to butchered. He decided that there would be a great hunt to track down and slay the monsters as the snow melted, amassing his men and leading them into the woods.

He also brought along his daughter.

I think you already know her name.

Karai was an unusual girl, trained in the arts of swordplay and archery by her father when he had no son. He planned to raise her as a kuniochi, which also meant training her in the arts of seduction. At least, that was what he called his nightly visits to her bedchamber from the time she was twelve years old.

He planned to marry her to one of his retainers, a one-eyed man who quietly knew the full extent of the girl's treatment and would be too loyal to protest her lack of virginity, or her father's continual ownership of her body. She had already spied upon or murdered several enemies of the family at the side of her father, and would continue to do so at the side of her husband. 

Karai was one of those children who are vaguely aware that they are in a cage, but aren't willing to see the bars. Not yet, anyway.

She expected a quick, brutal excursion, the way such hunts usually went. They'd spend a few days out, returning with bloody kills that Karai could never look too hard at. For some reason, the meaningless pain of animals had always bothered her more than that of humans, even if those animals were unnatural, and she hoped it wouldn't last too long.

Instead, she found herself pulling her horse away from one chaotic scene after another as the hunt quickly got much more complicated than anyone expected. 

She watched as her father's men were stymied by elaborate, increasingly deadly traps. No one was sure whether it was because the creatures had been warned or if they were just naturally paranoid, not that that made much different to the unlucky souls who had their innards splashed across forest paths.

They shot at a large toothy creature sunning itself by a pond, but it was too large and ungainly to be the village thieves, and besides, it got away. Same with the great spiked turtle they glimpsed in a clearing, although it managed to bite a soldier in half before fleeing, covered in arrow wounds.

They smacked around one of the locals, a madman in a mask who was known to wander at the forest's edge, but he convinced them that he knew nothing and was released. They tracked down a wise woman, a red-haired witch who was reputed to have dealings with forest creatures, but they found her hut empty and half-ruined, as if it had been that way for years (Saki's rough-tempered soldiers were quickly wearing out their welcome, so the locals decided not to inform them that the hut had a habit of doing that if the witch sensed a presence she didn't like approaching it).

Still, Lord Oroku was nothing if not persistent, and slowly they made their way deeper into the woods, leaving a few dead soldiers in their wake. They found bits of shed skin lying about, along with the occasional arrowhead or stray, three-toed footprint.

Once some soldiers swore they heard a snatch of song, for Fierce had always had a hard time keeping his voice time down even in times of crisis. Another soldier glimpsed a strange spotted creature peering down from a tree, and insisted that it had stuck out its tongue at him before disappearing.

By the time that they finally found the cave, Karai had found a treasonous part of herself rooting for the clever little monsters. As her father made his way through the hastily abandoned den, kicking at strange little machines and stamping on leaves carefully covered in berry-ink writing, she couldn't feeling a little disappointed.

The four brothers did their best to stay ahead of their pursuers, but they were tired, cold, hungry, stressed, and cut off from their friends. Fierce wanted to stand his ground and Clever had insisted on hauling along his most precious inventions and Sweet's stupid cat was sick and Brave had no earthly idea where they were supposed to go.

They finally collapsed under a bush, exhausted, and that was when the lord's forces literally stumbled upon them.

Karai had been watching her horse lap dew from a leaf when she was overhead a strangled squawk, and turned to see two soldiers staggering backward. One was bleeding from a solid blow to his nose, while the other had blood streaming from an ugly hole in his chest.

Then four creatures sprinted out of the undergrowth, each running in different directions. In an instant, Karai knew that these were the demons her father was looking for. He did, too, and shrieked an order to pursue

They were small, green creatures, lithe and strong, with makeshift weapons slung over their slender shells. The tallest one had a belt filled with pouches and some wrapped objects tied to his chest, while the smallest had a pale, catlike creature hanging limply over its shoulders. A third had a circle of rough stone knives tied around its muscular waist, occasionally twisting to throw them back at their pursuers, accompanied by ferocious growls. The fourth one was nothing more than green blur. 

Clever tossed a small object over his shoulder as he ran. The phrase "flash grenade" was not exactly in wide use at the time, so the soldiers who made the mistake of looking directly looking at were understandably very upset and confused when it went off in their faces, disorienting them with a painfully bright light and making their horses bump into each other. But they were hard men, and loyal, and very angry at these disrespectful little creatures, so the ones who weren't completely blinded staggered on with the chase.

None of them noticed that the lord's daughter wasn't shooting. They didn't expect her to, she was a woman, they'd barely noticed her presence except to wonder why she was here (and why she slept in her father's tent). But Karai had a bow and arrows with her, and she didn't use them, staying at the back of the chase. She was knocked off guard, both by the bright light and how clever these creatures seemed to be, and she didn't really feel like hurting them.

She could hear her father shouting commands as he struggled to herd the green monsters. She could hear a series of clicks, snaps, and growls from among the trees, although she couldn't see the source, and wondering if one demon was issuing similar orders to the others.

They were fast, but the horses were faster, and taking to the trees just made them a better target for arrows. Sweet was the first with to fall, shrieking as a horse's hoof slammed into his small arm. He fell on his shell, still clinging to his whimpering pet with the other arm. The rider let out a cry of triumph and drew an arrow

Then Brave--although Karai didn't know his name, she just thought he was a blue-eyed demon--leapt from a tree and cut him and his horse to pieces with a pair of swords made from bone. Her mouth dropped open.

It fell open even wider when, instead of attending of fleeing with his brother, he turned and _charged_ at the soldiers, swords blurring around his head to send arrows falling to pieces around his feet. He flipped up into the air, chopping off two men's heads, before hooking his legs around a branch and hoisting himself up into a tree, twisting and darting to avoid the arrows.

Meanwhile, Fierce had found Sweet, gently lifting the little turtle in his arms as Clever staggered to their side. They were both wounded, too, with an arrow sticking out of Clever's shell and blood streaming down Fierce's face.

The archers were taking aim at them again, but then the blue-eyed demon dropped out of the trees with a deafening shriek, drawing their attention again. He yowled a sharp order and the others, knowing an unavoidable command when they heard it, dashed off into the woods.

The remaining demon skipped and dodged in and out of sight, blades flashing as it led them on a desperate chase. It was good, no doubt about that, better than any human Karai had ever seen except herself and her father. The men screamed and shouted to each other, everyone convinced that they'd _just_ _seen_ the little fucker before shooting arrows into a leaf.

But she could also see the demon was tiring. Soon it was covered in cuts and bruises, and the huntsmen were catching it into an ever tightening ring.

Her father was sick of waiting, however, and had leapt from his horse with a growl. The demon staggered backward at the sight, surprised, and surprise quickly turned to fear as Lord Oroku advanced on him, claws swinging. One sword was snapped from his fingers, then another. Karai sucked in a breath as the creature was backed towards a tree, reminding herself that she didn't care.

But the turtle had one last, desperate move in his repertoire. He thrust a foot behind him, bracing it against the tree trunk, then hurtled himself towards her father's head. Sharp blades sliced open the creature's legs, but it didn't seem to notice as it slammed a foot against Lord Oroku's helmet and launched himself clear across the clearing, past Karai, vanishing silently into the branches yet again.

Her father let out an outraged and everyone started running around, trying to find the wretched thing. Karai's horse horse was jostled in the scrum, and when she'd finally readjusted herself she looked up to find herself gazing into a pair of terrified blue eyes.

The demon crouched in the crook of a tree, deep in the shadows of the leaves, hands pressed to his right leg, which seemed to be injured the worst. Its face was contorted in pain, its eyes big and glassy. If it tried to run again, it would make the injury worse, maybe dangerously so. For the first time, one of the beasts was trapped, exactly where they wanted it, and all Karai had to do was call out.

It was the reasonable thing to do. This was a monster after all, a dishonorable thief and brutal killer of brave, loyal men. It was a mistake of nature, just like her father said. And speaking of her father, he'd been taking his annoyance with the failed hunt out on her...if she gave him such a gift, he might grant her a few day's respite.

All these perfectly good reasons to call out flickered through Karai's mind, but she couldn't speak. Her tongue literally would not work. She was drowning in those big blue eyes, watching the way they glittered with tears of fear and pain. They were real, so human...so familiar.

He waited. She waited.

And then a woman's voice said. "Over there! It's over there!" And Karai was confused, until she realized that the voice was hers, that was her hand pointing, and she'd just sent her father's men in completely the wrong direction.

By the time they staggered back, frustrated and tired, the turtle was long gone.

They were left with no choice, but to bury their dead and return home, if only to replenish their resources of soldiers and supplies. There would be another hunt, Lord Oroku said. What had turned into a simple cleansing had become something more extreme. The demons would suffer for their defiance.

He wrote his outrage and humiliation on Karai's skin in bruises. Afterwards, she traced the dark marks and thought of blue eyes.

Clever found Brave hanging in the tree while the humans were distracted and brought him to where their other brothers were waiting, Sweet's arm in a sling and a patch over Fierce's eye. The three oldest turtles were all shaking, and Sweet had openly burst into tears.

Brave passed out while Clever was stitching his legs. When he woke up, Fierce told him that their reconnaissance had revealed that the humans were heading back out of the woods, for now. Brave nodded, the word _humans_ bringing up unbidden images of the female rider who'd spared him.

He insisted that they head to the hut of their red-haired witch, pointing out that the humans would expect them to move farther into the woods, not closer to civilization. The farther you went into the woods, the more dangerous creatures you could find there, and the brothers were in no shape to deal with them.

So they limped back to the witch--all except Brave, who was forbidden to walk on his healing legs by Clever. He lay curled up in Fierce's arms and thought about the woman who had spared his life.

Why had she done it? She had some honored position considering the quality of her horse and dress, so much greater than that of the villagers or even the other soldiers, a position that must have encouraged loyalty. She was _human,_ she was _normal,_ she was...beautiful, really. The type of beautiful person who should scream at the sight of him, because he _wasn't_ normal.

She wasn't like their witch, who had read their souls when they first stumbled upon each other and instantly known that they were worthy of respect. She wasn't like their madman, who was--well, too crazy to care about little things like personal appearance. So why was he still alive? Why had he not been captured and ruthlessly interrogated for the location of his brothers? _Why why why?_

The question haunted him as their witch fussed over them, as their madman staggered in through the door, as he and his brothers cried and comforted each other in their sleeping pile. It haunted him in the coming days as they healed from their wounds, reclaimed Brave's swords, offered aid to any friends who had been injured in the hunt, made plans for the next hunt (maybe there wouldn't be a next one? Maybe the humans had given up? Please please please).

If he mentioned it to any of the others, they probably wouldn't understand. He was alive, the girl had a moment of weakness, what did it matter? But it did. It mattered, in ways he couldn't ever express aloud.

When the idea first struck him to go looking for the girl, Brave rejected it as stupid. Which usually would have been enough, except that it kept coming back, accompanied by an image of the girl's dark, tired, lovely eyes. It haunted over the weeks as his legs healed, growing more reasonable and attractive with every passing day.

He wouldn't even have to sneak into the actual palace, would he? Ninja sometimes trained outside at night, to accustom their weaker human eyes to the darkness. He'd watched the lord's soldiers train from the shadows--it was how he'd mastered his swords. The girl may have an honored position, but something about her weapons and the way she held herself suggested that she might be ninja. Perhaps she trained outside, but in the palace's secluded garden?

He would only go once, he told himself. He had this idea in his head that if he could watch her in the distance, observe her for a while, and then he'd be able to figure out why. He'd observed humans enough, more than any of his brothers, he'd deduced some of their weirdest idiosyncrasies for them.

It was still probably a ridiculous idea, but being brave meant you sometimes had to indulge in those things.

Sneaking past over the wall and past the guards were easy. Still, Brave felt himself relax a little as he slipped into the garden, trees and grass closing in around him once again. It was too flowery, too neat to be the real woods, but at least it was somewhat familiar.

He was in luck; the girl was training under the light of torch and moon, blade glinting in her hand as she twisted and shifted. Her movements were perfectly precise, her body fluid as a snake. For little while, he forgot all about figuring things out and just gaped in awe.

Then her lord emerged from the shadows, and Brave's blood froze. He shrank back even farther into the shadows, his legs throbbing in pain. Lord Oroku moved over the girl, watching her perform, occasionally stepping in to adjust her movements.

Then a time came when he didn't step back, pressing up against the girl's shoulders instead and running his hands down her chest. The girl stirred, muttered something that sounded like "Father, I'm not fin--"

Lord Oroku stepped back, lightning-quick and cracked a palm across the girl's face. She staggered, and he caught her gently, pulling her face up in a soft kiss. Then he murmured something in her ear and walked away. Brave gaped in confusion.

The girl stared after him, shoulders twitching. When her father was gone, she lifted her sword and slammed it against the ground, hard. Then she dropped to her knees and dragged through her hands through her hair, mouth opening in a silent scream.

The urge to comfort surged up in Brave, as deeply ingrained as the urge to hide. The resulting struggle had physical effects, making him wobble on his feet and scrabble for balance. Most people would have missed it, but this girl had trained ears. She snatched up her sword and spun around, glaring into the dark. "Who's there?" she snarled. "Show yourself!" She drew in breath, preparing to scream.

Brave stepped out of the shadows, hands raised. "Are you okay?" he asked, before he could stop himself.

Her eyes went flat with shock. "It's....it's you," she said. "You speak Japanese?"

Brave blinked. "Yes." It was true. His father had instructed him in a variety of tongues--the animalistic speech he used with his brothers, the chattering tongues of the forest's different races, the interplay of mental images they sometimes used with their witch, the pattern of scents written on the wind. It made sense for the local human tongue to be among them.

"What do you want, monster?" the girl snarled, stalking towards him.

Brave looked down the point of her sword and was surprised not to feel fear. "Why didn't you tell on me?"

She stared.

"You could have caught me. You could have made your lord--your father--happy. Humans seem really interested in keeping their lord happy. But you didn't. Why?"

The girl smirked, although he didn't think it reached her eyes. "Maybe I wanted to kill you personally," she said, tapping the blade against his plastron. "Get all the honor to myself. I've killed real people before, you know. Killing an animal shouldn't be that hard."

"You already had a chance to do that," Brave pointed out. "You've got another chance, and you're not using it."

She raised an eyebrow. "Perhaps I'm just trying to get a good fight. You're not terrible with a blade, at least compared to some of the lunks I've had to spar with." She shifted into a fighting stance, eyes on his swords. "Perhaps I'm more interested in punishing you for your insolence, personally, than watching my father boil you alive in oil."

Brave shook his head, backing away. "They'll hear it," he said, eyes glancing at the windows. He wasn't sure how thick human glass was, but there could be no mistakes taken in a building full of ninja. "If you want to spar, we can do it in the forest."

"If I want to--" she broke off in an incredulous laugh. "Are you _mad,_ or just stupid? I don't spar with _animals."_

"Do you talk to them, then?" he asked.

"You bratty little--" She whipped the blade at his head and he ducked neatly out of the way. She came close, closer than many of her father's soldiers had done. Nevertheless... "I've seen you do better," he said, straightening back up.

Her eyes grew wide, although when she spoke all her voice contained was anger. "How long were you spying on me, you little freak?"

"Just for tonight," Brave reassured her.

"I will _gut_ you for that," she hissed. "I'll call my father right now--"

"And he'll wonder why I felt safe enough to come here," Brave said. "What you did to make feel that way." The girl flinched at the words, and he immediately felt guilty.

He blushed, glancing down at his feet. "I--I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

"Get out," she growled, glaring at him with eyes of black fire. "Get out. Tomorrow I will go into the woods alone, because you thrive on harassing crowds instead of honorable combat, and I will find you if you want to carry out this stupid duel, and I will _kill_ you, demon. And if you try to ambush me with those other abominations I will kill them, too."

"No ambush," he said, bowing his head. "You're not a friend, but you're not an enemy either. No ambushes." He smirked. "No ambushes from you, either. I'd smell your father's horde coming from a mile away." Then he melted back in the night.

_What the fuck did I just do?_ Brave wondered as he scaled the wall. It was frivolous, irresponsible, everything his father had trained him not to do. But...that was also what made it so intoxicating. And tonight hadn't answered his question-- _why, why did you spare me?_ Would the sparring--duel--whatever--give him an answer?

He was taking a terrible risk. If she killed him, there would be no one left to protect his brothers the way he could. So why was he so deeply certain she wouldn't kill him? What did it mean?

Brave kept his muscles tense as he ran into the night, waiting for the girl to sound the alarm, but she never did.

 _What the fuck did I just do?_ Karai wondered, refusing to concentrate on her slow, inescapble progress towards her father's bedroom. Why had she even talked to that thing? Why was it still alive?

Not _it_ , she reminded herself. _He._ It sounded like a he, and certainly had the insolent presumption of one. She'd killed plenty of hes before, though.

_(But none had ever been so willing to sacrifice themselves for someone smaller and weaker. She had never felt like she was looking into a mirror when she stared into their eyes)_

She stepped into her father's room, and prepared to open her mouth. If she told him what had happened, he'd get distracted, and maybe she wouldn't have to shut her mind down another night.

But once again, the words didn't come. As her father loomed over her, a dark and hungry shadow, Karai reminded herself that the little green bastard was right. Mentioning him now would only invite awkward questions, leading to worse pain.

Besides, maybe if she killed the demon personally she'd stop thinking about those blue eyes, so desperate and determined.

Her father pushed her onto the bed, and she buried herself in dreams of bloody victory, not knowing if she wanted them to come true.


	18. In The Time Of Unusual Things (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brave and Karai's paths continue to cross, with unforeseen consequences.

Karai had slipped out of her father's house before, when his presence became too suffocating. Usually she went out of night, hovering at the edge of village gatherings with the hood of her cloak drawn up, but she had snuck out at daytime a few times, too. She picked her way through the woods, swatting away bugs and breathing in the bright scent of flowers.

She could have had told her father that one of the creatures had sneaked into their house to threaten her, without mentioning what could have inspired him to come. She could have told him that the turtles were probably staying closer to civilization than they had before. She could have told him a lot of things that could have sent him striding into the woods at her side, claws drawn and soldiers behind them.

But she hadn't, and she was very carefully not thinking of the possible reasons why not.

She knew that she might be walking into an ambush, but this situation was no less dangerous than many of the ones her father had sent her into. It felt kind of...nice to be taking a risk on her own, actually.

The demon emerged from the shadows, startling her, although Karai hid it well. "I didn't think you'd show up," she mused, drawing her blade. The turtle just smiled.

He was a sloppier fighter than her, but he had physical strength and knowledge of the terrain on his side. They skipped through the woods together, trading insults as butterflies hummed around their heads and birds sang or screeched overhead. She knocked a sword from his hand and grinned, preparing to go in for the kill.

It didn't go quite as she planned.

"Is this a draw?" he asked as they stood panting in a clearing, blades pressed to each other's necks.

"Like hell it is," she hissed through gritted teeth, not daring to move her sword. For a few seconds, they stood in awkward silence, not meeting his eyes.

His gaze flicked to her cheek. "You have a bruise," he said quietly.

 _Shit._ The powder she'd carefully applied this morning was running from sweat, leaving her shame exposed for her to see. "None of your concern," she growled.

"Why do you stay with that man if he hits you?"

She stared at him. "Are you seriously trying to turn me against my father?"

The demon blinked, face full of genuine confusion. "Why do you call him your father? He doesn't act like one."

Karai rolled her eyes. "A father is a father, no matter how he acts."

He stared. "Is that how humans do it?"

She stared, anger briefly forgotten underneath her own confusion. "How else could it work?"

"A father is someone who loves you, who takes care of you," he said, as if she was an idiot for not knowing this. "A father is someone who chooses you, and doesn't treat you like a burden."

"You have a father?" she asked. "I thought you monsters were spawned from the deepest pits of hell."

He studied her for a second, then fluidly twisted away from her sword and darted to the other end of the clearing, snatching up a sword before leaping into a tree. "If you come back, maybe I'll tell you where we come from."

"Coward!" she yelled, shaking her sword, careful not to get to close.

He cocked his head. "I had fun fighting with you today. Did you?" Then he hurtled backwards out of the tree and vanished, before she could wonder whether she had, in fact, had fun.

They met up and fought, again and again. The woman couldn't come on anything resembling a regular basis, because she didn't want to be caught sneaking out or was drawn away on grim duties for her father, but Brave looked for her every time he went out to hunt or gather food. He could always pick out her distinctive scent approaching, and he never shied away from it.

Every time they fought, it ended in a draw. Every. Single. Time. She was learning the terrain, learning to see in the shadows, but Brave was learning from her fighting techniques and using them to finesse his own. As a result they were constantly, perfectly matched.

The second time they met up, he told her his name.

"Brave?" she snickered. "Stupid would be more fitting."

"You have no idea the number of times I've heard that," Brave said.

The woman looked thoughtful. "I suppose you've earned the right to know the name of the person who will destroy you. I am Oroku Karai."

"It's nice to meet you, Karai," he told her, bowing out of the way of a sword blade.

But she didn't kill him, and he didn't kill her, and after a while it became a little hard to tell how much either of them were trying. They had begun to talk more before and after their fights, and not all of their conversation revolved around threats.

Brave had started to like talking to Karai. (And to her great surprise, she found that she liked talking to him).

At one point, he told her where he had come from, about the eggs and the dead dragon. When she'd asked if he was curious about his real parents, he'd looked confused. "Splinter was my real parent," he said. "Whoever created me entrusted me into his care, and he treated it as an honor."

At another point, she told him why she'd spared his life. "I thought you had human eyes," she admitted. "It was weak of me, stupid and foolish...but you looked like a person, another scared person. And what you'd done for your brothers...not many men would do that, I think." Then she'd shook her head wildly, as if physically relieving herself of sentiment, and charged again.

Technically, he could stop showing up at this point, since he'd gotten the answer to his question. But now he had more questions, and was only more intrigued by the answers.

He liked being with someone without feeling the weight of constant fear and responsibility, the way he did around his brothers. Brave found Karai clever, and complicated, not to mention very beautiful, and he was especially drawn to the fact that she seemed consistently intrigued by him, by his skills and biting wit and endless strangeness.

One time, she accused him of lusting for her. Almost on instinct, he accused of lusting for him. The encounter ended on stuttering confusion on both sides, and when they next met they did their best to ignore the strange feelings hanging heavy in the air.

His brothers teased him for sneaking out, joking that he'd fallen for a pretty village girl, although none of them really believed it and he could quickly distract them by starting a fight. If their witch suspected anything, she never said it. 

Sometimes, Karai would show up at their fights moving stiffly, and Brave was always careful not to damage her further. Over a month after they first met, she fell on her stomach and screamed in pain, her eyes going blank with pain. He brought her healing herbs and sat by her side until she felt comfortable moving again. 

Afterwards, she finally told her what her father did to her, sometimes. "It's not a big deal," she said while he gaped in horror. "I'm luckier than most girls my age. I won't be married as young, I'm taught to fight, I was given a sword." When he pressed the issue she shoved him away and disappeared for three days.

Then she returned, telling him that her father was organizing another hunt. He hid in the witch's house with his siblings for a week, feeling horse's hooves vibrate through the protective spells.

When he finally emerged, he found Karai waiting for him with a fresh black eye. "I don't want to be alone," she told him.

"Okay," he said simply. He would convince her to leave, somehow, even if meant her abandoning him and the forest forever, but he could do it subtly and slowly it he had to.

She warned him whenever her father's hunts would approached, which had started happening more frequently. It meant they had less time together, but the time they did have was spent less on fighting and more on just talking, just being.

She showed him more of herself: her pain from what her father did and her grief for her mother and her guilt for the things she'd done. He showed her more of himself, too: his worries for his family, his grief for his father, the nightmares he sometimes had of the monsters--including her father--that had tried to kill him.

Their first kiss came four months after they met. She showed up looking tired and battered, later in the evening than usual. He'd been out hunting, but had been drawn away when he caught her scent on the wind.

"I'm going to marry my father's retainer tomorrow," she said. "They'll have a stricter eye on me than before. It'll be harder for me to get away." The words were a sharp, burning knife in his heart, and judging by her face Karai felt the same.

"Do you want to marry him?" he asked cautiously. He had only the vaguest grasp of what marriage was; that it involved some kind of ceremony before regularly having sex with someone.

(Fierce was having sex with their madman, Clever was having sex with their witch, and Sweet was having sex with the beast called Leatherhead, but none of them had had a ceremony before they started so he wasn't sure if it counted as marriage, or if such things really mattered. He only knew that he was vaguely jealous, but such was life).

"He's twice my age. He knows what my father does to me and he doesn't care." She studied her nails, seeming unable to meet his eyes. "I don't want him, but if I said no my father would hurt me until I said yes."

"You don't have to stay with them," he said--begged, really.

"And where could I stay?" she asked, looking at him sadly. "With you?"

"If you wanted to," he said quietly, deciding not to think of how his brothers would react to the presence of the daughter of the man who was trying to kill them. "But you could go to other places, too, if you wanted. I...I just want you to be happy."

"I want you to be happy, too," she admitted. "And I don't think you can be that way with someone like me near you." She sighed. "Anyway, there's nowhere I can go, not really. Not as a woman in this world."

Then she unsheathed her sword. "Come on, demon," she said, the word sounding more found than he'd ever heard it. "Let's help each other forget, one last time."

But it's hard to fight well when your heart is breaking, and for the first time their fight didn't end in a draw. Brave stood weaponless, her sword tip pressing to his neck, once again wondering why shouldn't be afraid.

Karai put her sword away and leaned in to kiss him. Her lips were damp with quiet tears and smeared with her sweat. They were the sweetest things he had ever tasted.

Then she stepped away from, pulling off her cloak and tossing it on the ground. "I think you're beautiful," she said. "If I ever told anyone they'd say I shouldn't, that it's disgusting and wrong. But I do anyway, and I'm too tired to pretend otherwise. I know you find me beautiful, too. Do you want to be beautiful together?"

He did. So they made love together under the rising moon, murmuring soft things to each other as she showed him what to do. He was gentle with her, more gentle than her father had ever been, and she was gentle with him in return.

He fell asleep and woke up to find her gone. He cried for a little while before cleaning himself off and stumbling home. His head was full of pain and fear, mixed with a few desperate, flickering hopes that maybe things would somehow turn all right in the end.

When he returned to the witch's hut, he found it ablaze. His family was gone, the surrounding dirt scattered with blood and bodies of their enemies. A bit of the witch's red hair had snagged on a branch, and their madman's mask lay broken in the mud. Sweet's cat peered at him sadly from a tree and let out a soft meow.

This is what happened:

There was a girl in the village who had gotten pregnant before marriage, as girls sometimes do, and sought the witch's unjudging help. There were a few complications, so she had to make multiple trips, and at one point her lover caught her sneaking back from the woods, smelling of herbs and looking guilty.

Her lover was one of the lord's soldiers.

He wrenched the whole story from her, about the witch's powers and her disappearing hut. And then, desperate to appease his fury, she told him about the creatures she'd glimpsed under the hut's floor, strange green things that the witch assured her meant no harm.

They made the girl lead them to the witch's hut. They made her approach alone, so that the only thing the witch would sense was a pained, frightened mind. She was so busy trying to care for the girl's bruises and trying to interpret her guilty mental blubbering that she didn't sense the soldiers charging the now-visible hut until it was too late. The girl took an arrow meant for her.

They all fought well, but even if Brave had been there they would have lost--not that he recognized this later. Even Leatherhead was brought down after he saw one of the men holding a knife to Sweet's throat.

The monsters, the witch, and the madman would all be marched to the dungeons, to be executed in front of the people on the morrow. The lord wanted to make it very clear to everyone that he would no longer be tricked and shamed by a pack of chattering abominations. He had them all shackled and marched home, while he and his men scoured the nearby woods for the remaining turtle.

Karai, forcibly buried in preparations for her wedding, had no inkling of this latest raid. She only realized what was happening when she saw the prisoners being marched through her father's courtyard, bloody and bruised, taunted by the soldiers dragging them. Her father wasn't in sight and she knew where he was, who he was looking for.

She went to wait in the garden for the inevitable to occur. She sat, thinking about everything her father had done to her, and her feelings for Brave, and the pluck and wit she'd seen in his family from the few glimpses she'd had of them.

She thought about all those things, and she wondered if she had the strength to turn her back on everything she had ever known.

When Brave collapsed at her feet, exhausted and shaking, bleeding from arrow wounds he had sustained while evading her father's men, begging for her help as he tried not to cry, she knew that she did.

Karai pulled him into her arms and stroked his shell. "It's all right," she whispered. "We'll make it all right, together."

She led him through the palace halls, where he most certainly would have gotten hopelessly lost if he'd tried to navigate them on his own. She helped him avoid or kill any guards who threatened to get in their way. She refused to focus on exactly what she was doing, on what it meant for her future and her sense of self.

They reached the dungeons and she stood watch while he freed his family with stolen keys. They all lurched in shock and fear at the sight of her. _Enemy,_ Fierce hissed, raising his fists.

 _Friend,_ Brave replied, his eyes big and desperate as he begged them all to understand, promised to explain later.

 _Ally,_ the witch said soothingly, the word filling all of their minds, and that for now that was enough.

Karai led them up out of that terrible prison and back through the halls. Leatherhead made a bit of racket, no matter how quickly and quietly the others moved, and by the time they finally stumbled into the garden her and Brave's swords were bloody from fending off unwanted attention. Behind them, they could hear voices shouting, and knew that some of the bodies had been found.

She knew which sections of the wall were unguarded this time at night, and they were able to scramble over the other side. Leatherhead's bulk drew attention, but he was able to get over the wall more quickly than any of them, and soon they were all sprinted towards the forest

When they reached the safety of the tree line, Karai staggered to a halt. Her cage was breaking around her, and she was terrified.

Brave grabbed her hand. "Come with us," he begged. "Please."

She stared at him, then back at the palace, eyes wild. "I--"

Shouts echoed from the woods. Lord Oroku's men were returning, and they encountered the messenger sent to warn them of the prisoner's escapes. They could hear pounding hooves drawing nearer as Lord Oroku screamed at his men to spread out, that they couldn't have gotten far.

 _Scatter,_ Brave hissed. _Meet up at the old cave._ His family obeyed without a word, and even Leatherhead could be soundless in the familiar forest. He turned to Karai, but she was already gone, melting into the dark.

As he ran, Brave could hear Lord Oroku shouting at his men, ordering them to burn the forest. The trees were thinner here, and his soldiers were less likely to trap themselves in the blaze.

Brave forced himself to sprint towards the voices. He had to stop them from setting the fire, he had to protect his family and make up for his mistakes.

He found a group gathered in a cleaning with an abandoned well, collecting torches and bundles of wood under the one-eyed retainer's supervision. Brave grabbed his bow before one of them could light his bundle and fired, sending the man toppling with a groan. He made his way through the shadows, picking them off while dancing out of the way of their own arrows. They could see him, didn't dare look for him, they were too busy ducking for cover to start any fires....

And then Lord Oroku himself bulled out of the trees behind him, kicking Brave into the light with a foot to his shell. The man advanced on him, growling hatred while his remaining soldiers in to form a circle. There were no trees in reach now, no way for Brave to duck and weave out of their line of sight. The torchlight shone down on him, imprisoning him.

He fought like a being possessed, and for a while he managed to hold his own. When they knocked his weapons away he managed to break the one-eyed man's neck with his bare hands. But he couldn't stand against Lord Oroku, no one could, and finally the man shattered his right knee with a sickening _crack_. Brave fell, screaming.

"No more running away, beast," Lord Oroku said, raising his claws. "Time to go back to the hell from whence you came." Brave blinked up at him through a haze of painful tears, trying to content himself with the fact that the others had gotten away.

And then Karai leapt out of the woods and slammed her sword against her father's claws, sending him staggering backward. She threw himself between him and Brave, falling into a perfect fighting stance despite the way that her hands shook with terror.

"Go," Brave begged, trying and failing to haul himself over to his broken swords. "Run, _please..."_

"No," she said simply, eyes fixed on her father.

Lord Oroku launched himself upright with a groan. "The demon has ensorcelled you, daughter," he hissed. "Put the blade down and stand aside, before you dishonor yourself further."

"Honor is a meaningless concept," she replied, her voice quivering just a little. "And he didn't put me under any spell. He woke me up from one."

Lord Oroku gaped. "You would stand against me? Your master, your father?"

"I don't want you to be my father anymore," Karai told him, and charged.

They'd sparred before, and Karai knew her father's moves better than any living man. She also knew how many years of skill he had on her, how incredibly fast and strong she was. But she didn't run, because Brave couldn't run, and she didn't want to leave him to go back to her miserable life.

"Yield," her father begged, backing her up against the well. The stone bit against her calves; she couldn't use it to flip over her father's head without risking him cutting off hers. "Yield, Karai, and all is forgiven."

"Not by me," she whispered. Behind his shoulder, she could see Brave had crawled to his bow and was trying to string an arrow.

"Then that creature will follow you to hell," her father said, eyes going blank with a familiar fury, and he ran her through, sending her toppling backward into the well.

The girl, the turtle, and the warlord all screamed as she plunged into the dark.

Brave's arrow, jolted off target, zipped by Lord Oroku's head and buried itself in the wood. The human turned with a growl and stalked over to Brave, grabbing him by the throat and slamming him against a tree.

"You," he growled as Brave gasped and sobbed for air. "This is all your fault. She's dead because of _you."_ From the look in his eyes, he seemed to actually believe that.

Brave's world was turning black at the edges, and he welcomed it. His soul had followed Karai into the dark, and what use is life without a soul?

"You will die slowly," Lord Oroku said, spitting in Brave's face. "You and your wretched family. You will wished I had killed you on this day, you unholy monstrosity. Cleansing you from the world will be a _pleasure."_

Brave's eyes rolled up in his head and he passed out. Lord Oroku hauled him over his shoulder and stalked into the woods, looking for the others.

The others--even Sweet's cat--were all captured over the course of the next few days, betrayed by the thin trees, slowed down by their injuries, and herded with fire. When they were all marched into the lord's courtyard on a chilly dawn, they found their brother hanging from a frame, his slender body covered in careful cuts, burns, and bruises, biting his lip to hold back his cries of pain.

The witch would have sent him a breath of comfort, but she was unconscious, beaten bloody by the soldiers who would had only decided not to rape her for fear that she had some sorcerer's disease. The others gazed at him in silent terror, sensing that something in their brother had broken on a level beyond the physical.

Brave watched through glassy, dead eyes as they were shackled around a pole, as the wood was piled around their feet. From his throne, Lord Oroku watched the scene, already making plans for where he would acquire his next bride.

But....

But...

But...

But there is magic in the world. It goes by different names, wears different faces as it employs its will, but it is there. Some it expresses itself as a concrete, manipulable force, such as mutagen. Sometimes the forces at work are less understandable, more random.

In the depths of the well, two days after her death, Karai woke up.

She was still Karai, she knew this, and she also knew that she was something else. She looked at herself with eyes that no longer had to adjust to the dark, and whimpered when she saw what had happened.

She was covered in stiff, white skin, crinkly and dead in places. Her hair had grown to hang to her ankles in a tangled, hungry mass, a web of tentacles or snake tails. She rested her hand on her breast and felt no heartbeat.

For a little while she cowered in the depths of the well, drowning in shock and fear. She had been told her whole life that her beauty was one of its greatest attributes, and the fact that it had been so abruptly snatched away threatened to spend her spiraling into the dark.

If she'd just had revenge to keep her going, it might have been weeks, even years before she mustered the strength to climb out of that hole. But it wasn't just revenge. It was the memories of bright, brave faces, of one face in particular that had looked at her with fear and then with curiosity and then with love.

So she climbed, first with her hands and then, as she realized its new capabilities, her hair. It lifted her up out of the well and into the clearing. She took her sword, even though she didn't really know if she needed it anymore.

She squelched out of the woods, towards her father's house, hair streaming behind her like a thick black tail.

No one was in sight; everyone who could had gathered in the courtyard to watch the monsters die. As she drew near the courtyard gate, Karai could hear her father pontificating, going on about the need to cleanse this world and to maintain loyalty to one's master.

He was so caught up his speech that at first he didn't hear her slowly push the gates open with her hair and make her way into the courtyard. Then he heard the first whispers and shrieks, saw people scrambling out of her way as she approached his throne.

Oroku Saki saw a ghost, and he looked like it. The prisoners gaped at her from their pole, and Brave...he jolted in his restraints as he saw her, eyes growing wide with disbelieving hope.

"Hello, Lord Oroku," Karai said sweetly. "We have some unfinished business."

"Not possible..." her father breathed.

She shrugged and one of the dark tendrils plucked the sword from her hand, tossing to where Brave hung. He snatched it out of the air and started sawing himself free.

"Kill it!" her father shrieked, and the soldiers, stirred into action, did their best to obey. Karai's hair twirled behind her head in a dark cloud, deflecting arrows and knocking charging warriors backward. She didn't even bother to look at them as she freed the prisoners. The witch staggered upright, mind stirring by all the emotions hanging in the air, and when she saw Karai she smiled.

Brave was already cutting through the soldiers as Karai snatched dropped weapons from the ground and tossed them to his family. They didn't hesitate before leaping into combat, voices raised in battle cries as they ducked and weaved through the crowd. Brave couldn't walk, but his family formed a circle around him, protecting him the way he protected them.

The soldiers were put off guard, but they would collect themselves swiftly, and if Karai didn't hurry this battle would turn into a slaughter in a few minutes.

She strode towards her father as he leapt from his throne and charged her, blades gleaming. His claws slashed and tore at her hair, but for every blow he landed Karai landed one of her own or wrapped another tendril around his leg. "You twisted little cunt!" he shrieked, spit flying.

The look in his eye would have sent her staggering a few weeks or days ago, but there was too much at stake for her to let the fear win now. His soldiers had started abandoning the main battle to press around her instead, hacking through her hair. An arrow passed through Karai's shoulder and she didn't react. The soldiers would probably overwhelm her, but all her considerable determination and fury was focused on Lord Oroku.

She bound him with her hair, tying him up in a living black straitjacket as he struggled and shrieked. Then she spun, putting him between her and her soldiers. "Back off if you want your lord to live," she said, voice steely and cold.

For a moment there was tense silence, before her father twisted around to glare at her. "I would rather die than live in a world with an ungrateful horror like you blighting my name," he snarled. "Burn the bitch!"

The soldiers nocked their arrows and started setting them alight. Karai squeezed her father tighter, wondering if she could kill him before his men killed her. Wondering if there was a place in the afterlife, good or bad, for beings like her.

And then Brave's family emerged from the shadow, spattered with blood and hungry for more. They tore the soldiers before they could turn their backs. Her father had unwittingly split his forces trying to take Karai now, and now the courtyard was slick with bodies. The villagers had all long since fled, and any soldiers who could had done the same.

Her father hung twisting in her grip, gazing in her eyes. "You think these animals will want you, now that you're a bigger freak than any of them?" He laughed, spitting blood. "I am the only one who ever truly understood you, Karai, and you will regret--"

She ripped him apart. It was a bit of a process, and he screamed until the very end.

Afterwards, Karai stood over his body, slick with blood and guts. She shot a thoughtful glance at the empty throne before turning away, starting to make her way out of the courtyard.

"Karai, wait!" Brave called from where he was propped against the wall. "Where are you going?"

She stared at him in confusion. "Why do you care?" she asked, gesturing to herself. "Look at me, I'm not alive anymore. I'm a monster." Her father was right, of course he was right. She was a bigger freak than any of them.

But Brave just shook his head. "Not to me," he said, and she realized that his eyes were as full of wonder when they looked at her as they'd been when they'd first made love. "I'm a monster too, remember?" He tried to stand up, only to topple over with a grunt. She was at his side in an instant, hauling him into his arms.

"I don't..." she shook her head, looking down at him sadly. "Your family wouldn't even want me. I couldn't even understand them."

 _Are you sure about that?_ he asked in the forest tongue, and to her surprise she realized that she understood it. Of course she did--she was a creature of the forest now, too.

She glanced over to where they were all standing over Lord Oroku's body--the witch, the madman, the scaly beast, and the three turtle brothers. They looked at her with identical smiles. When she looked back down at Brave, he was smiling too.

"I'll never have your children," she said quietly. "I don't know how long I have until I rot away."

"I don't care," he said, and she believed him.

So she brought him back to the forest, the forest that was theirs forever, for none of the generations of lords who would rule this land ever dared go near it again. She helped him recover as best he could, she stood by his side as his--their--family faced different threats that appeared in the heart of woods and sent each one on its way.

They played together, survived together, explored together, had adventures with their different allies and friends together, coped with Fierce's moods and Sweet's antics and Clever's wild inventions together. They had no children, but they could help raise his brothers,' and they did.

Eventually, she started to rot, but by then his skin had startled to wrinkle. And when Karai finally entered the afterlife for the second time, Brave didn't take long too long to follow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Partly inspired by the ancient Japanese tale "Banchō Sarayashiki."


	19. Symphony Of A Breaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karai is broken. And sometimes, brokenness is contagious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not set in a specific universe. Post-apocalyptic; inspired by the infamous 2003 "Same As It Never Was" episode and work by GoblinCatKC.
> 
> Very long, dark, disturbing story.

There's a song stuck in Leo's head.

He hears it as he kneels by Karai's throne, back straight and head high. The mechanical blue eyes she gave him are carefully fixed on the shadows, scanning for any approaching threat. A few Foot soldiers glance back at him, although by now they've long accepted his presence.

Karai's hand strokes the top of his head, and he permits himself to lean slightly into the touch.

He's not sure where the song comes from. He's never heard anything like it on his missions into New York, where the residents blast music through their windows as he slinks through the shadows. It isn't like the music Karai sometimes plays during their private sessions, either. It's got a soft, soothing beat and he almost feels compelled to hum along. Almost.

He looks down at his arms and hands. Like the rest of him, they're covered in scar tissue, armor formed by a thousand cuts and burns. He can read some of the kanji written there: _pet_ , _beast_ , _butcher_ , _angel, obedient._ He thinks that the sight of the scars used to repulse him, but he's had them for so long he's gotten used to it.

Her finger runs down a tail of his black mask, to the red collar that encircles his throat. He thinks her hands might be moving in time with the song.

_She stormed the lair in the middle of the day, when they were sleeping. She told him later that she'd tortured April O'Neil and Casey Jones for their location._

_Raph was unconscious when he ordered his brothers and father to leave him behind so he could hold them off, so they was no one to resist his commands. He fought Karai, and it came to a draw. Then her blade pricked his skin and the drug filled him up, sent him spiraling into the dark._

_He woke up bound to her bed, spread-eagled, stripped of everything. She was sitting by the bed, wrapped in a robe. There was a collar around his throat that shocked him whenever he tried to meditate, to escape._

_"Are you going to kill me?" he asked, and was confused when she said no._

_"Why not? I killed your father."_

_"I was going to kill him anyway," she said. "You just sped up the inevitable."_

_"Then what do you want?"_

_"I want to break you," she replied simply, shrugging out of her robe. He stared, then squeezed his eyes shut, and she giggled. The bed creaked as she climbed on top of him._

_He ordered himself not to cum or cry. He did both._

The delegation from Detroit starts when he sees him. Leo smirks. People outside of New York aren't that used to mutants, and even among his kind Leo is exceptional.

"Don't be afraid of Leonardo," Karai says as he approaches them and starts patting them down. "He's perfectly tamed." Leo bares his teeth, reminding them that "tamed" by no means extends to "harmless." They flinch when he touches them, and his smile grows broader.

They're clean, so he heads back to her throne and drops down by her side. She tugs his head so that it rests against her leg and twirls a mask tail around his finger while she talks. The members of the delegation keep losing at their train of thought as they glance at him, at them both: the beautiful woman in spiked armor and the monster practically in her lap.

He wonders who they're more scared of: him or Karai.

Things start getting rocky with the delegation and one of them stalks toward the throne, growling about unequal trade relationships. Leo is on his feet in an instant, grabbing the man's chin in his fingers so that their eyes lock. He doesn't bother to draw his swords; all he needs to do is lean forward and growl softly.

The man wets himself as his companions issue frantic apologies. "Let him go, Leo," Karai finally says. "I think he's learned his lesson." He nods and returns to her side.

The message is clear: the Foot hold the secret to mutants, which means the Foot hold the keys to everything in this strange new world. The negotiations finish smoothly afterwards.

_"Why me?" he asked her, a few days in, when he'd regained the ability to speak without screaming or having a panic attack. "Why put so much effort into breaking me?"_

_"Because I felt like it," she said. "Because you're strong, and I liked breaking strong things. Because you're the best fighter of the bunch, and that makes you useful. Because you killed my father before I could, which I both love and hate you for. Because you're beautiful, especially when you cry. Because I've never broken a mutant before, and I'm curious. Because what I feel for you is probably the closest I'll ever get to love."_

_"None of that makes sense," he pointed out._

_"It will," she said, leaning towards him. A knife gleamed in her hands, bright and hungry as her eyes. "Just give it time."_

_The first two marks were on his shoulders: "lover" and "killer." She punished him whenever he tried to claw them off._

They spar in their private dojo, blades whirling around their heads. Neither of them hold back; she told him not to. Sometimes they fight using other weapons, but they both prefer swords.

They use sharpened blades. They cut each other, but only once in a great while. They're too evenly matched to cause real damage. Soon she's slimed with sweat and her hair's sticking out in every direction and she's beautiful, so beautiful. The harsh clanging of swords is music to Leo's ears.

When she's tired of fighting, she whispers, "Fuck me," and Leo does. He topples her to the mat, pulling off her clothes as they smother each other with kisses. She runs the flat of his blade down the back of his head as he straddles her, and he doesn't flinch. She won't break the skin unless she wants to, and he knows she doesn't want to.

"I love you," she says as he grinds her into the mat. "I love you, too," he replies.

Their voices rise together, drowning out the song in his head.

_She had robots built for him to fight. "I don't want you getting sloppy," she explained._ _The robots looked like his brothers._

_He scoffed at the idea of fighting them, until the Raph one made a grab for his tail. There was something metal gleaming between its legs, something long and slender_

_"What did you think the fitting was for?" she asked. He couldn't pull in air enough for a reply. He'd blocked out the memory of his legs up in stirrups and the silent doctor measuring his anus, the way he'd blocked out so much else. Tried to, anyway._

_"I will kill you one day," he growled, picking up his swords. And the battles began._

_Sometimes he won, although there were only always new robots the next time. Sometimes he didn't, usually because he'd collapsed from exhaustion. If he lost, they just held him for a few minutes, touching him gently, and he realized that they were waiting for Karai to transmit a command._

_Whenever she wanted to teach him a lesson, she gave the go-ahead._

_She gave the go-ahead the first day. It killed something in him, left a hole for her to stuff in new things._

_Their fingers and cocks were so cold, so painful, but they never did permanent damage. Sometimes they even gave him pleasure. He hated himself for that, even though Karai told him it was nothing to be ashamed of._

_After a while she added a fourth robot, an unscarred one in blue. That one was rougher in both sex and combat, covering Leo's body in mottled bruises. He laughed at her for such a silly trick, but he still started thinking about the blue robot--his old self--as something different from him. As an enemy._

It's not a busy day, so they get to eat dinner together. Leo meditates in the corner while she eats her food, although it's nothing like the kind of deep meditation he used to do.

When she's ready, Karai snaps her fingers and he crawls to her side. She feeds him by hand slowly, carefully, occasionally pausing to wipe off her fingers. She holds out a cup of water for him to lap and sip.

Afterward, he rests his head in her lap while she does paperwork, feeling safe and content.

He's thinking about the song; he thinks he might remember the rat singing it. It's one of the few memories of the rat he can stand, he thinks. The rat punished him artlessly and carelessly, with harsh words or brutal cracks of his tail. And he never added any pleasure into the pain. He wasn't good with punishment, not like Karai.

_"Why did you try to kill yourself?" she asked, as they watched the iron bubble in the coals._

_He flexed his bandaged wrists in the restraints. "I tried to escape in other ways. They didn't work." He winced at the memory of his punishments. Whips, cuts, burns, orgasm denial, vibrators stuffed inside for far too long, days alone with the robots, days spent completely restrained, days in a small box._

_She tapped her fingers together thoughtfully. "I tried to kill myself when I was thirteen," she said. "Pills. I was frightened of making a mess."_

_"Do you want my sympathy?" he asked._

_"I think I'd have it even if I didn't want it," she replied. He rolled his eyes, even though he suspected her words might be true. He was weird that way._

_She reached over and started untying his bandages. "This is only a small part of your punishment," she told him. "But it might be the most effective."_

_The first kanji she branded on his arm was "beloved." After that came appreciated, protected, safe, happy, strong. He couldn't even look at his wrists again for a long time, much less cut them._

He carefully checks the bedroom for potential attackers, the way he always does. Then he pulls on the blindfold and goes to kneel by the bed. He waits for her to finish washing up, to run the last few strokes of the brush through her hair.

She kneels behind him, quiet as a cat, and runs her hands over his scarred shell. He arches his back into her touch as best he can. There's a coldness beneath his tail as she preps him with lubricant, making him squirm in anticipation, before she slips the vibrator in.

"I want you to see me with your tongue," she says, getting on the bed. He knows what she means, so he climbs with her and kneels between her legs and starts planting kisses over her bare feet, making his up her legs. The higher he climbs, the higher the vibrator's setting goes.

Leo passes lightly over her genitals, grinning as she squirms. He makes his way to her breasts, lapping and sucking, tonguing her nipples until she lets out a cry. He makes her way to her face, her chin, her lips, her eyes, her hair, before descending back over her belly and between her legs. By now the vibrator's throbbing so fiercely it hurts, and he puts one hand on his erection to keep from coming too soon.

He feels the familiar vibrations that means she's about to cum, and they orgasm together. He curls up on the bed, head nestled under the curve of the armpit. The vibrator's still buzzing away inside him, but he doesn't take it out because she didn't tell him to.

He suspects she has a few more games to play tonight, and he's right.

_"I love you," she said, a few weeks in. At least, he thought it might be weeks. Her chamber had no windows; she said she didn't like them._

_Leo snickered from where he sat in the corner of her bedroom, knees pressed to his chest,_ _at the far end of his chain. "Love? You torture and rape me. That's not love."_

_She shrugged. "My father raped me, and his training often felt like torture, but he still loved me. The mistake he made was thinking that just because he loved me I would automatically love him in return. If you're going to hurt someone and then make them love you, you need to cultivate that love carefully, painstakingly."_

_"That's not how it's supposed to go," he said quietly._

_"Perhaps. I think it's all a matter of perspective." She pressed a button that started retracting the chain, dragging him slowly, painfully towards her. He saw objects glinting on her nightstand, and forced himself not to look._

_"Do you think I love you?" he asked, as she took his chin in her hands._

_"Not yet," she murmured, brushing a soft finger over his ear slits. "But you will."_

He takes a shower while she's still asleep. He doesn't like showers, because they mean taking off his collar, and his neck feels bare and cold without it. He traces the unscarred strip of skin around his throat and winces. He thinks of his scars as protection, something to make him strong and safe.

Leo takes care not to look directly into the water as he cleans himself. Even though the spray doesn't damage his electric eyes, wiping down the lenses still feels weird. 

When they installed the eyes, the doctors wanted to give him all sorts of fancy things like infrared vision and automatic targeting and data readouts. Karai said no, and he agreed. These eyes work just the way the old ones do, if a hair sharper.

He sees a bug crawling up the wall and catches it with a soapy finger, lowering it to safety away from the crushing spray.

As he scrubs he hums a few notes of the elusive song to himself. The water trickles down his back, and he flexes his shoulders to keep it from pooling in the mild depression in his shell.

_"Please," he begged. It was not the first time he'd begged her to stop, not by far, nor would it be the last. But it felt just as humiliating and terrifying every time._

_"It's okay, Leo," she says. "I know how sensitive your shell is. I won't go too deep." She adjusted her grip on the knife and let out a soft grunt as she dragged it down his back, sending waves of pain through his bones._

_He lay strapped plastron down on a table, head turned to the side so that his cheek pressed against the unforgiving stone. He'd been injected with a paralytic that froze his body below the neck, so he couldn't even squirm as she carved the Foot insignia into his shell._

_"Don't," he said, crying now. "Stop, please. I'll be good, I'll be so good..."_

_"Yes, you will," she agreed. "This is just to make sure you remember to be good all the time." She kissed the back of his head. "You're going to be lovelier than ever."_

The new mutant emerges from its tank with a growl, shaking and throbbing. It's a splice of mutants upon mutants, twisted and jammed into a towering muscular monstrosity. Several insane yellow eyes glare down at Leo as he approaches it, hands behind his back.

He leaps and flips around its swinging tendrils and fists, bouncing off walls and ceilings while the lab techs cower in their protective booth. He finds its nerves through trial and error, eventually bringing it crashing down in cascades of pain.

He offers it food and it snaps at his hand, so he hurts it. He offers it food and it snaps at his hand, so he hurts it. He offers it food and it snaps at his hand, so he hurts it. He offers it food and it doesn't bother to resist, so he doesn't hurt it.

He keeps this up through regular sessions, teaching the creature to respond to his commands. He tells it to destroy some things and to spare some things, and punishes it for mixing them up.

One day he brings it two men, ordering it to obliterate one and ignore the other. The creature does as it is told, and Leo knows it is time to start training it in earnest. It will be a formidable weapon in the upcoming battles with opposing cities or rebel factions within New York.

The art of breaking something takes many forms, but the science is simple: reward desirable behavior and punish undesirable behavior. Leo is very good at breaking things.

He learned from the best.

_She gave him a truth serum. At first he didn't understand why. "Do you hate me?" she asked._

_"Of course."_

_"Why do you eat from my hand?"_

_"So I can keep my strength up for when I escape."_

_"Do you fantasize about killing me?"_

_"A lot."_

_"Do you miss your family, your brothers?"_

_"Always."_

_"Would you leave if you could?"_

_"Yes."_

_Then the questions started to change._

_"Did you ever get tired, leading them?"_

_"Sometimes."_

_"Does it feel good, not having to give orders anymore? Not having to worry and worry?"_

_"Sometimes."_

_She put a hand on his knee. "How does this make you feel?"_

_"Apprehensive. I don't know if you're going to hurt me or pleasure me."_

_"But you have a preference, don't you?"_

_"Yes."_

_She kissed him on the neck. "Do you like it when I do that? Do you like being inside me, me being inside you? Does it feel good"_

_He shuddered, but he couldn't stop the words. "Yes."_

_"Do you hate yourself, for liking it?"_

_"Always."_

_"When I punish you, do you understand why I do it?"_

_"To control me. To break me."_

_She shook her head. "Do you remember the specific actions on your part that trigger a punishment? Disobedience, rebellion, refusal to communicate, disrespectful speech?"_

_"...Yes."_

_"So when I hurt you, it's really an extension of you hurting yourself by being bad. And when I pleasure you, it's because you've been seeking pleasure by being good."_

_"You're wrong. I don't want to be hurt or raped. I never want that."_

_"But you just said that you like it when I pleasure you, and understand when I hurt you."_

_"That's not...you're wrong." He tried to rally. "Did you like it when your father raped you? When he hurt you?"_

_"My father only pleasured me when he wanted to show me how to pleasure others. From the beginning I was disposable, a tool. You're not disposable. He'd hurt me when he was angry, even if I hadn't done anything wrong. When I'm angry and it's not your fault, I take it out on something else. Your father, did he ever hurt you for something the others did?"_

_Leo frowned. "Yes, but--that's different. It was only because I hadn't set a good example."_

_"So it was--supposedly--something you did, again. But you don't hate your father for punishing you, even though he never gave you any pleasure with the pain."_

_"He's my father. You're my captor. It's different. He never raped me."_

_"How did he punish you?"_

_"He'd whip me with his tail, give me nerve attacks, make me take cold showers. He gave me a few burns, for the really big screw-ups." He shivered a little, thinking about it._

_"And what did he say?"_

_He didn't want to remember what his father had said, but he did anyway. "That I was worthless, dishonorable, lazy, stupid. That I failed my responsibilities as leader and brother. That I didn't have any of my siblings' natural talents, so I needed to work twice as hard to redeem myself."_

_"Did it hurt, hearing that?"_

_He twitched, tugged futilely at his shackles. "Like acid in my veins."_

_"I never do that to you. No matter what you said or did, I'd never say such cruel things."_

_"But you rape me," he repeated, feeling a little desperate and wishing that the stupid serum would wear off sooner._

_She hummed. "Do you remember when I gave you an aphrodisiac?"_

_He winced at the memory. "Yes."_

_"Did you wish it had gone on for longer, that you had more time before you remembered yourself?"_

_Coming down from that had been a nightmare. She'd said she wouldn't do it too often, not wanting to break him with drugs, and he'd been so grateful. "Yes."_

_"Why?"_

_"I felt ashamed afterwards, broken and out of control."_

_"Does it hurt, holding on to your old identity? Comparing that to what you are now, to what's been done to you?"_

_"Yes."_

_"Then why hold on?"_

_"I don't have a choice. I have to get back to my family."_

_"Do you worry that your family might not accept you as you are now?" She traced the edge of his shell, where the word "lover" had been carved._

_"Yes."_

_"But you want to go back to them. Even though your brothers might not understand, might hate you for allowing yourself to be marked with the sign of the evil Foot clan. Even though your father will read the kanji and know exactly what's been done. He'll shame and hurt you, worse than ever before, and that's if he allows you to live."_

_"It'll be..." He wanted to say that it would be better than here, but he truly didn't know._

_"Would you miss me, if I let you go? If I never touched you again, if you had to lie in your bed alone, knowing that your family would always look at you with contempt or fear or pity?"_

_His breath caught. "I..."_

_"You don't know, do you?"_

_Leo's shoulders slumped. "No," he admitted. "I don't."_

_She started touching him, then. At one point she asked, "Do you want me to stop? If you say yes, I'll stop."_

_He believed her. He also knew what his answer would be. "No," he replied, tears trickling down his face. She kissed them away, as she always did._

He darts over the rooftops of New York, quicker than lightning and quieter than a shadow, mask tails flickering in the wind. He can hear the muffled chatter of humans and mutants from below as they gather around their street markets, the buzz of music from their windows.

He makes his way to the rebel stronghold--one of many scattered across the city, parasites nurtured on the blood of the desperate and confused. He's tortured two people tonight to find their location, leaving their bodies carefully tucked into dumpsters. He doesn't have long before the rebels realize that they're missing some members and raise the alarm.

Leo doesn't need long.

He slinks through the halls with his katanas sheathed, taking down anyone in his way with quick flashes from his knives. He makes his way to the conference room where they've gathered for one of their ridiculous meetings, chattering and snarling at each as they try to resurrect the old order's corpse.

The smoke engulfed the room in swirling blackness and they draw their guns, wildly shooting at each other. Leo grew up underground, walking in the dark. He spent more time than he can remember in total blindness. Men have been shooting at him since he was fourteen years old, and he hasn't been so much as grazed in years.

He cuts them up carefully, with precise cuts and stabs. " _Blue Eyes!"_ one of them screams before he dies, a futile warning, and Leo smirks. The Blue-Eyed Butcher, they call him. The Demon, the Witch's Familiar.

(The Foot Soldiers call him _K_ _ame_ to his face. Behind his back he can hear them calling him the Shredder's pet whore, her little animal. He doesn't kill or mutilate them for that, but he hurts them--precisely, surgically, in front of their comrades--until they beg for mercy. New recruits are told to guard their tongues; for you never know when Kame is listening).

In a few minutes the room is slicked red with blood and guts, damp and steaming. He stands in the center as the song buzzes in his head and licks in the blood off his lips, feeling proud of himself. He will bring their heads back to Karai and get a reward.

Then he hears a whimper. There's a small boy under the table, not much older than thirteen or fourteen. He hugs his knees to his chest and gapes up at Leo, lips moving wordlessly.

Leo stares down at this boy, and for a moment he's awash in memories of being young and scared himself. He's been where this child is, cowering from the wrath of a bloodthirsty ninja or an angry father.

He stands there, just looking, and the boy grabs a loaded gun from the floor and fires. Leo twists out of his way, hissing as the bullet tears a line of pain up his shoulder. He kicks the boy in the arm, breaking it and making him him drop the gun. He slices off the child's head before he can scream.

_He managed to actually escape the facility, once. He was on the run for over a week, eating out of dumpsters and trash cans. It was an unwelcome feeling, not knowing where his food would come from, not having a soft bed to sleep in, and he hated himself for being so weak._

_There was something wrong with the city. There were fewer people around, and mutants walking openly on the streets. Entire swathes of the city were devastated, picked over by scavengers. The sky would turn strange colors, the wind smelled funny, and trees were growing on the roads out of the city._

_And the Foot was everywhere. They walked along the streets in their black uniforms, their insignia hung from the walls. Signs in English and Japanese reminded people to pay their tithes or face expulsion._

_He needed his brothers, but he couldn't find them. He tried April and Casey's apartment, even though he already knew they were dead. He tried every rendezvous point he'd set up with his family, above ground or underground. He scoured alley after alley, basement after basement, trying his best to put himself in his brothers' foot wrappings. It didn't work._

_In desperation, he finally returned to the broken remains of their old lair._ _"I knew you would show up eventually," Karai said. He spun to find her leaning against the wall. "When you had nowhere else to go."_

_Leo drew his stolen swords. "Where are they?"_

_She shrugged. "I don't know. I wish I did. I'd like to make them watch us fuck, see how happy we are together." The very possibility made his breath catch with terror._

_"What happened?" he snarled, advancing on her._

_"Alien invasion," Karai replied. "Broke the old order to nothing. Three heroes--four if you count the rat--sacrificed themselves to save us all, and then the Foot was left to pick up the pieces."_

_The world tilted under his feet. He crashed to his knees, trying to stand up and fight, but his brain was spitting sparks and the world had flipped upside down. "No," he whispered. "No."_

_"Or maybe they're not dead," Karai said, walking towards him. "I never saw any bodies. Maybe they just left. What I do know is that they're not in my city."_

_"No," he repeated. "No, they're just hiding from you, they--"_

_"If I couldn't find them, you could," she said. "And you didn't."_

_"The city's changed," he insisted, swords rattling against the floor. "I don't know it as well, there are new hiding places--"_

_"You've been mine for over a year and a half," she said, her voice so gentle. "If they are alive, if they thought you were alive, if they_ cared _, they would have at least attempted a rescue attempt."_

 _"SHUT UP!" he screamed, charging her. But he wasn't thinking clearly and his heart was breaking, because if they were dead it was his fault, and if they were alive...they were dead, they had to be dead thanks to_ him _, because if they were alive they would have found him, they would have saved him..._

_He was crying too hard to see, much less fight, and she took him down, paralyzed him, straddled his shell while he sobbed endlessly, the last bit of self-control carved away. "I'm sorry, Leo," she whispered, stroking his head. "It wasn't your fault."_

_"Yes it was," he moaned. "I'm the leader, I'm supposed to protect them."_

_"No, you're not," she told him. "You don't have those responsibilities anymore. All you have to do is be my pet, my sharp sword."_

_"Fuck you," he said half-heartedly, unable to find the strength to pull away from her hand. He didn't want to be the leader anymore, it hurt too much. Being a pet hurt too, though._

_"I certainly will, after your punishment," she said. "But first let's go home."_

_After he was hauled back to the facility, he was injected with another paralytic and strapped to a lab table. Karai sat by his side, holding his hand, while the doctors extracted his eyes. They worked carefully, slicing and cauterizing individual nerves. He couldn't move, couldn't even scream._

_"You'll get these back when you've earned them," Karai said, rolling a blue eyeball between her fingers. Then they cut the other one out, and for a long time his world was darkness._

He stands with his arms shackled over his head and his feet bound to the floor, even though he wouldn't move if he were free. His eyes are turned off, the way they always are for his punishments, although his black mask has been traded for a blindfold anyway.

"You were bad," Karai says, running a finger down his bandaged arm. Self-applied; the medics were not allowed to attend to him over such a minor injury, to see his weakness. It was his idea.

Her touch hurts, but not as badly as her words.

"Yes, Mistress," he replies, bowing his head. He has to earn the right to call her Karai again.

"Why were you bad?" He can picture her, standing in front of him in simple clothes, maybe even jeans and a T-shirt. No elaborate leather suits, not for them. They don't need such pretensions.

"I...I saw a child, while cleaning out the nest. He was so young. It made me go soft; I froze." He blushes at the words. There is a digital link recording his shame, but she always wants him to describe his failures out loud.

"We were children, once, and we were already deadly at that age," she reminds him. Something brushes the back of thighs, runs up his buttocks and onto his shell. A whip. It'll bruise, but it won't ruin the beautiful kanji.

"Yes, Mistress." In the corners of the room, he thinks he can hear the clanking of the robots. He doesn't like the robots. They're not like Karai; they don't talk to him.

"Are you sorry?" Her hand plays with his tail.

"Yes, Mistress." Leo wonders how long he'll be here. If the robots clean him when he relieves himself, if Karai feeds and waters him, it'll be a while before muscle degeneracy is a problem.

He thinks that he's spent some very long stretches of time in these restraints. It happened during the early days, the one he doesn't like thinking about, before he realized how much Karai loved him and how much he loved her.

"'Sorry' wouldn't have been brought you back if he'd killed you," Karai says, shaking him out of his thoughts. Her hand tightens on his tail, painfully so. It's a more tender area, so the kanji there were carved with less force. She taps one word, _beautiful._

"No, Mistress." She runs a finger up his side and along his kanji, looking for a bare spot. She'll find a few, she always does. He wonders what she'll write this time.

"You have to be punished." She caresses his cheek and he leans into her touch, savoring it. It'll be a while before she touches him with her bare hands again.

"Yes, Mistress." The song's swelling in his head. It's different from what Karai's got playing in the corner, which is something low and smooth and romantic.

"Four days," she says. "Two for hesitating, two for getting hurt. The robots will take care of you whenever I'm gone."

He nods, because that sounds fair.

"I'll miss you," she tells him sadly. "The bed will be cold."

"I'll miss you, too. I'm sorry. I love you." He says the last one right before Karai slips a gag into his mouth.

"I love you, too." There's a soft rustle as she unfolds her whip.

_In the dark, you feel everything else a thousand times more._

_Leo discovered this after he was blinded. He was left to stagger around their chambers, feeling his way to the toilet with hands that were shackled for the first few days. The collar was designed to shock him into paralysis if he stepped out the door without her permission, as usual, only now he had no hope of disabling the collar again or even finding the door on his own._

_Karai helped him walk, helped him eat, helped use the bathroom. She wrote new kanji on his skin and read them aloud to him. She had started talking to him more about life in the outside world, about her struggles with rebel factions._

_"Good," he said once, curled up on the bed, tired and sore from another punishment (he'd tried to drown himself in the shower again). "Maybe they'll kill you."_

_"They'll kill you, too," she pointed out, rubbing his shell as she lay stretched on the bed besides him, gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Most of them don't like mutants. They'd look at you and just see another Foot freak to tear apart."_

_He barked a harsh, tired laugh. "Isn't that what I am? What you made me?"_

_"Don't sell yourself short, Leo," she said, gently tugging him onto his shell. He was unshackled, as he occasionally was these days, but he didn't bother fighting. He'd been getting better at blind combat with the robots (although he still lost, every time) but he wasn't a match for Karai in his current state. If he resisted, he'd just wake up in the punishment chamber again._

_Besides, her touch--any warm touch--felt kind of...nice, these days. A thought that only managed to trigger a small drop in the ocean of self-loathing where he lived._

_"You're not like the others," she whispered, rolling on top of him. "You're my masterpiece."_

She unhooks the chains, undoes the gag and lets him curl up on the floor at her feet. Everything hurts, but it's a good kind of hurt, a cleansing pain. He's shaking a little, from the aftereffects of being pushed to limits of pain and pleasure again, but it's okay. Everything's okay. He'll be able to walk again in a few hours.

Karai replaces the blindfold with his mask and flicks his eyes back on. They smile when they see each other. "Hi," she says. "Hi," he replies through bruised lips. They share a soft kiss, and all is forgiven. Her hand runs over one of the new kanji on his shoulder: _predator._

One of the robots scoops him up and carries him to the bedchamber. Leo stares at the robot's mechanical face, trying to remember why Karai designed the robots to look like him, and yet subtly different.

He thinks there were other creatures like him, long ago. But now they're gone, dead or left, and they don't really matter anymore, do they? He's the special one, the masterpiece.

After the robot's gone, they curl up together and make plans to destroy a nearby city that won't pay tribute. They've both got good ideas for strategy, bouncing them off each other and collaborating in a mutually respectful partnership.

Leo resembles the lessons he's learned in his many battles, even if he doesn't always remember who he was fighting against at the time. Trying to remember too much is a hard, painful process, and he has more important things to focus on.

He twirls a lock of Karai's black hair between his fingers and plays the song in his mind.

_She liked asking him for things, always had. Touch yourself for me, kiss me, give me a blowjob, dance with me, touch me, tell me a long-held secret, tell me a story about your childhood, tell me a sex fantasy. Describe the first time you masturbated, the first time you took a life._

_In the beginning, he told her to go to hell. That invited pain, from her and the robots, but he didn't care. He would escape eventually, and if he didn't his brothers would find him. He could be defiant, he could be honorable, he could retain a smidgen of control over his thoughts and his body._

_But now his eyes were gone, and his brothers were gone, and his city was unrecognizable. He felt like he'd been here for an eternity._

_He couldn't remember the last time he'd talked to someone who hadn't been Karai. If he had had the opportunity, he wouldn't know what to say._

_So he found himself fulfilling her requests, sometimes. Because he was tired, and there were minutes or hours when he forget why he was fighting. His mind was starting to crack under the endless pressure, snippets of his past falling away._

_He'd rally on occasion. He was left unrestrained more often, and he'd tried to kill her or himself, although he never managed it before the collar shocked him out. It happened less often, though, as time passed._

_With every new mark, every day in the punishment chamber, she sliced a little more resistance out of him. He felt it happening, but he couldn't stop it._

They lead their forces through the rebellious city together, a trail of blood and fire in their wake. Leo barks orders and watches his mutant unit wreak a dozen different kinds of havoc, feeling proud of their efforts. He's ground them into a good team over the years, instilling them with an immortal loyalty to their masters.

Leo and Karai are careful to direct their efforts on the political infrastructure, staying away from most civilian and economic areas. The city needs to be just intact enough to provide tribute, but they're determined to leave behind some scars.

A muscular wolf-man that named itself Vlad tries to rape a woman and Leo orders him to stop with a click-hiss. _Your cock's too big for her,_ he points out, growling and snapping in the special language used among his inhuman troops. _I told you all, I'm not going to let anyone wasting time poking around. You can fuck Bertha when you get home._

Bertha is a brain-dead heap of hole-studded flesh, an unholy cross between a cow, a human female, and a few other things. She was originally declared a mistake, but Leo ordered her kept around, to provide inducement for mutant soldiers who couldn't seek relief from humans, or even other, better-built mutants. She's become quite a success.

Vlad growls, but lets the woman scramble away. His fur is dotted with jagged scars, many of them at Leo's hand, but he's finally learned obedience. Leo nods, satisfied, and goes to help one of the spider-sisters bring down a helicopter.

A member of the Foot tries to kill him during the battle. This happens sometimes; men get jealous of the monster that sleeps in Karai's bed and somehow believe they can take his place. Leo breaks the silly soldier's wrists and has him put into custody.

He and Karai will have quite a blast playing with him after the battle is won. They'll make sure everyone gets a good luck at the remains, reminding them of the price of thinking beyond one's station.

Leo skips through the streets, humming, splashing in crimson puddles. His swords flicker like bolts of silver lightning, reflecting the streetlights.

_At one point, long after he'd lost all track of time, she injected him with a paralytic and propped up against the wall, in the shadows. She brought in a man and made love to him. He could hear their voices together, their grunting and moaning._

_The sound made him so angry. He told himself he shouldn't care, that he should be grateful she was focusing her attention on someone else for once. But he couldn't stop the anger from rising up, choking him._ Is this how Raph feels all the time? _a small voice asked inside him._

 _Another, smaller voice wondered_ Who's Raph, again?

_And then his thoughts were shattered as Karai let out a loud cry, only it didn't sound like her usual noises. None of the noises she made tonight did, in fact. Was she faking? Why? Was this a punishment? He couldn't remember doing anything that would deserve a punishment, and why did she think it would work as one._

_The paralytic wore off while they were both asleep. Leo crawled towards the bed without knowing why, feeling his way to his feet. His hand landed on the nightstand--on the_ knife _that had been left there._

_He froze. He hadn't been allowed weapons outside the training room for so long. If he was still holding his weapons at the end of a session, he was shocked before they were taken away. Something he broke things to make weapons against himself or others, but he'd never found an actual knife just lying around._

_Leo couldn't see them, but he could hear their breathing. He knew which one was Karai, because her breathing sounded so familiar, and he knew which one was the man--the invader._

_If killed her, she would be dead before the collar could do its work. She might make enough noise to wake the man up, but whoever he was he wasn't a Karai, or a Shredder. He wasn't a real threat._

_From the position of her breathing, he knew where her throat was. All he needed to do was bring the knife down and the nightmare would be over. No more pain, no more humiliation, no more abuse, no more degradation and manipulation._

_No more of Karai's laughter, no more of her stories and songs, no more of her voice. No more of her warm body, her expert hands and tools bringing him to impossible heights of mind-numbing pleasure._

_Just a scarred, broken, blind turtle, alone in a city he didn't understand, abandoned by everyone he'd ever loved._

_He gritted his teeth. It was worth it. His freedom would be worth it. He would survive this as he'd survived so much else, and everything would be all right._

_It_ had _to be worth it._

Goodbye, _he thought, and brought the knife crashing down._

_He buried it in the man's neck, sending blood splashing over himself and Karai. It had been so long since he'd smelled anyone's blood other than his own, or Karai's when she menstruated._

_It was not an accident, but he regretted it immediately._

_"Leo?" said Karai, and he felt heat bathe his face as she flicked on the light. "Oh, darling, are you okay?" He tried to bury the knife in her flesh, but she had already rolled gracefully off the bed, pressing the button that shocked him into paralysis._

_"Hush..." she hauled him off the bloody mattress and gently lowered him to the floor. He lay there, curled in a heap, as she called in the turtle-bots to clean up and wash away the blood before setting him back on the mattress, shackling him in place. By the time they'd carried the body away, the paralysis had worn off, and he'd started to shiver and sob._

_"Oh, my love," she cooed, stroking his head. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it. You're the only one for me." He knew that, of course, he was kicking himself for not realizing it earlier. It was a test, the knife and the man were a test, and by passing it he'd failed himself._

_"I'm not jealous," he whispered, frantically pounding his head against the pillow. "I'm not, I'm_ not _, I_ hate _you..."_

_"Liars deserve to be punished," she murmured, tracing a hand down his shell. "But I've been bad tonight, too, so I think we'll call it a draw."_

_He yanked futilely on the restraints, hating himself. Someone would be disappointed at him for what had happened tonight, but try as he might he couldn't recall who._

_"I'm going to make you feel so good, my pet," she whispered, running her hands up his thighs. "I'll show you things he never even dreamed of."_

"Please," the man begs, weeping silently, "Please kill me, please..." His broken wrists hang loosely in the shackles and his joints have been carefully tugged out of alignment. There is no pleasure for him here, only pain.

Karai kneels in front of him, carefully inserting the wires. They're similar to the ones she occasionally uses for Leo's prostrate, but while those wires are meant to gently stimulate, these are meant to burn. They will heat up oh so slowly, and Leo and Karai will be inflicting different forms of pain on the rest of the man's body the whole time.

"Please," he moans, gazing into Leo's eyes even though he's talking to Karai. "Please, Master Shredder, I'll be so good, please..."

She shoves the wires a little deeper. "Did you fantasize about this, Qiun?" she asks him. "Me, kneeling at your feet? Do you think I am some toy to be fought over"

"Give me another chance to prove my loyalty, to have an honorable death," he wails. "Please, I--"

"You misunderstand," Leo says simply, smirking when he sees the man's eyes widen. He knows most of the Foot believe that he can't speak a human tongue. "You are not here to be tamed or broken." He leans closer into the man's face, taking deep breaths of his fear. "You are here to be _destroyed."_

As Karai finishes jamming the wires, Leo goes to consider the selection of knives laid out on a table. He picks one up and studies Qiun's naked body thoughtfully. The human's face has to be left mostly untouched, so he can be recognized by his clan members, but as for the rest of him...well, does he really _need_ all that skin?

It's not like it's going to do him any good, considering that they essentially plan to burn him from the inside out.

_"My mind's in pieces," he told her, during another dose of the truth serum. She sat on his lap, head tucked into the curve of his neck. In the distance, he could hear music playing faintly, smooth jazz. There'd been music playing before, sometimes, but he'd never really been able to focus on it until now._

_"It hurts to remember. It hurts too think too hard about how I got here, with you. There are gaps, huge gaps, and I hate them."_

_She shrugged, snuggled deeper into him. "I don't think that anyone--even me--could fill those gaps if they tried. Why not just let it happen, finish the process? Let the old stuff crumble away and see what new things are left behind."_

_"Whatever's left, it won't be_ me, _" he said, shaking his head. "I don't want that."_

 _"Are you sure_ _?" she asked him. "What do you think the old you stood for?"_

 _He frowned, trying to remember what the word_ Leonardo _means. Is it the blue robot, the one he hates the most? Is it the child, cowering before an angry father? Is it the failed leader, the one left behind by brothers whose names he couldn't remember?_

_He though it might mean other things, better things, but he wasn't sure._

_The words on his skin, though, the ones Karai gave him...he knew what they meant. They offered him an identity, a way of thinking about himself and the world, a means of grounding himself everything crumbled around him._

_"I don't know," he admitted. "All I know is that what I'm becoming is..."_

_He glanced down his plastron. He couldn't see the words carved there, but he could knew where and what they all were. One in particular seemed to fit his current state of mind pretty well._

_"Different," he said. Different from her, different from people of both races, different from his family. Different from what he'd used to be._

This tank is different from the others. It's smaller, with a more elaborate system of wires and buttons, and it's empty--so far. Leo sits crosslegged in front of it, tracing his fingers thoughtfully over the glass as the song hums in his head.

Behind him, he can hear Karai talking with the doctors about gestation and fertilization, discussing the growth of a baby. Their baby.

"Are...are you quite sure about this, Master Shredder?" someone asks. "This child will not look human."

"Neither does much of New York," Karai replies. Her voice lowers slightly, with a hint of menace. "And I would advise you not to question my orders again."

Leo smiles, resting his palm against the tank's side. He wonders what he'll feel the day another, smaller hand reaches back. He taps his fingers in time with the song, imagines the baby tapping along. 

_When he finally earned his eyes back, he could no longer clearly recall why he had lost them. He only knew that Karai was right to take them away, and she was right to give them back. He would do his best to be worthy of them, of her. When they came online the first thing he saw was her, and she was beautiful._

_She helped him pull on his gear the first time, tying on the mask and winding the wrappings, telling him where everything in the belt is. The outfit felt familiar, but it wasn't frightening the way other familiar things sometimes were._

_The wrappings didn't cover too much of his body. He wanted as many of his scars to be visible as possible, proud marks of how they've grown together._

_He felt uncomfortable when the shock collar comes off, and pulled on the simpler one she held out as quickly as possible._

_When she went to the throne room, he fell into step behind her. He felt curious eyes on him, darting questions, but he didn't care. Karai's opinion was the only one that truly mattered to him, just as his was the only one that truly mattered to her._

_"Are you nervous?" she murmured, as he knelt by her throne for the first time._

_"With you?" he murmured back. "Never."_

Leo doesn't have nightmares. They've all been carved out of him.

But once in a while, Karai does. Tonight is particularly bad.

 _"Father,"_ she moans in Japanese, twisting and writhing in their bed. Leo yanks off the blindfold and pulls her into his arms. (There was a time, he thinks when he used to shrink away from her whenever she had nightmares, even mocked her about them in the morning, but he pushes those memories away with shame).

 _"Daddy,"_ Kara begs, tears streaming down her face. " _Daddy, stop, please."_ Her eyes flicker open, but they're blind to him, blind to everything except a man long dead. "It's okay," he tells her, but she doesn't seem to hear.

For a second, Leo doesn't know what to do. And then he remembers: the song, the one that's been playing in his burned-out head for so long. He remembers what it is: a lullaby.

He begins to sing, his voice low and sweet. It's an old Japanese tune, one that the father he no longer loves sang to him and the brothers he can no longer remember. When he sings, the melody finds new life, a new purpose in this new world.

He realizes that it won't haunt him anymore. It's not longer a pesky little memory, it's something of use, something that's been folded into the present.

Leo sings until his voice is tired, until Karai's shudders have stopped. They lie folded into each other, her damp hair tickling his face. He inhales her beautiful scent, so glad to have her back. "You all right?" he asks, and she nods stiffly.

When she speaks, her voice is distant and tired. "Sometimes, I wish I didn't break you," she murmurs. "Wait, that's not true--sometimes, I wish I wasn't the kind of person who liked to break people. It would have been...interesting, I think, to learn what kind of person I might have been, without my father."

"You should forget what could have been," he advises her, stroking her hair. "I forgot what I was, and it worked wonders." It's only now, in the aftermath of one of her nightmares, that they can be truly honest with each other, if not with themselves, about the true nature of their relationship. The dark things at its heart.

"Our child won't be broken," Karai says firmly. "Not broken and not used. We'll...we'll help it grow, instead. He or she will grow into something like the world has never seen, something strong and beautiful and unbreakable."

"I like that," he says, and he does, although privately he doesn't think there's such a thing as 'unbreakable.' Although who knows, perhaps their child, their heir, will surprise them.

He'll give his words to the child, Leo decides. Words have become a precious thing for him, only shared with the most precious people in his life. If he can share them with Karai, he'll share them with their baby.

"I love you," he says, planting a kiss on her forehead.

"I love you, too," she replies, lifting her head so that their lips meet.

They hold onto each other in the dark, refusing to let go for fear of drowning.


	20. Watch It Burn With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night Karai discovers her true identity, she and Leo are captured together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from the lyrics of Robert DeLong's "First Person On Earth."

Shredder gave Leo to Tiger Claw.

Karai heard him scream, just once, as she was dragged out of her own cell. That scream was more than enough. It rang through her head over and over again as she sat chained up in her bedroom, staring at nothing.

She told herself she shouldn't care about Leo, that what was happening to him wasn't her fault. She hadn't forced the imbecile to follow her when she went to confront the Shredder's forces after she'd led them to the Lair, giving his family time to escape. The sacrifice was meant to be _hers_ alone, after a lifetime of fuck-ups.

But Leo was the stupid hero type, and she really didn't know why she was surprised. She'd actually thought they'd be able to get away, too, before Saki showed up and jumped them.

Now they were here. And she knew, even if Leo didn't, that there would be no rescue mission. Splinter wouldn't risk losing another of his children, not now. If it had been Saki they'd have been given up for dead, and Splinter was no doubt doing the same, even if he dressed it up in different terms.

So she waited for ~~her father~~ the Shredder, to come hurt her, the way he'd been hurting her since she was thirteen years old, the way Leo was no doubt being hurt now.

He let her stew for a few hours before he swaggered in, the first time, and then seemed to spend a few more hours on a confused lecture about family and duty and honor. Karai just stared at him, all the words drained out of her.

When he couldn't talk the fact that he'd killed her mother out of existence, he tried to fuck it away instead.

Karai lay beneath him, deaf to the mattress' creaking and numb to the pain between her legs or the bruises blossoming on her torso. She started at the ceiling and thought of nothing. She was dead, a dead girl, and the Shredder was only screwing himself over by fucking a corpse.

She'd never weep for him or try to please him again. She wasn't sure she could, even if she tried.

It went on like that for weeks, as they established a sort of demonic routine. Shredder would appear, rant for a while, smack her around, rape her, occasionally break down in tears, and then disappear. Rinse and repeat. In between, she'd cry quietly, work out to keep herself sane, or make faces at the security camera.

After their "chats," Saki would go through a period of guilt where he'd get her presents: flowers to throw in the trash, chocolates to eat as messily as possible, clothes to rip up (no jewelry, no sharp objects). He'd have silent doctors come in after him, offering her ice packs and pain pills, setting her broken bones and bandaging her cuts.

She knew that Leo had no such luxuries.

As she stood in the shower, watching blood trickle down her bruised legs, Karai found herself wondering: Is it worse to spend your whole life in a cage, only to briefly escape before being recaptured, or to be shoved in the cage with no warning or preparation? After a while, she decided it didn't matter: she and Leo were on equal levels of hell.

Shredder spent a lot of time screaming about Hamato Yoshi, but he didn't focus as much on Leo or his brothers. Occasionally he threatened Leo in an attempt to get to communicate, but Karai knew not to fall for it. Leo would be hurt no matter what she did.

Her not-father mentioned Leo less often, and Karai wondered if she was meant to forget him, to forget the truth of her origins, to forget the outside world entirely.

She laughed at the idea, found it ridiculous. And then, long after she'd lost track of time, they let Leo into her quarters.

For a moment, they simply stared at each other across the wreckage of the room (Saki had had a particularly big tantrum and absolutely trashed the place, a sight she'd found almost entertaining until he'd turned his fists on her). Karai gaped at him in shock from where she sat by the bricked-up window, while Leo regarded her with a blank, glassy expression.

He looked like shit. He'd lost weight, his green skin sallow and sickly. They'd stripped him of his gear, and his eyes just looked _wrong_ without that ridiculous mask. There was a shock collar around his throat and reddened scars around his wrists and ankles, as if he'd only recently been unclasped from his manacles.

Tiger Claw had covered him with a hideous rainbow of scars and bruises; a few of his wounds looked like they might be infected. The edges of his shell were smashed and flattened, as if they'd been torn at with sharp claws. The Foot insignia had been branded on his arm, a glaring red accusal.

There was something white at the corner of his mouth, something that she knew wasn't frosting.

For a few seconds, all she could stare. Then Leo stiffly bowed to her and set about cleaning the room. He moved stiffly, often propping himself on walls or furniture, and she realized he was dragging his right leg in a way that legs shouldn't be dragged. When he turned away she saw that the material of his shell was rippled and warped, marked by the unmistakable signs of a whip.

"Leo," she gasped out. Speaking was hoarse and painful after so many weeks of silence, but not as bad as the daggers in her heart.

He stopped what he was doing and dropped to his knees, face twitching ever so slightly as the right one hit the ground. "Yes, Mistress?"

His voice was a dead, empty drone. It had all the defiance and recognition of radio static. The world tipped out from under Karai and she was falling, falling into the Shredder's gaping mouth.

"I..." her eyes darted to the security cameras. Even if he could hear what she had to say, which didn't seem likely, he'd be punished for it. "Nothing," she said faintly.

While he finished putting her room to rights, she put her head in her hands and sobbed. So this was her fate. To be turned into a living doll, a stuttering toy for her master to play with. No wonder they'd waited before Leo had broken before letting them see each other. The sight of him like this was almost enough to snap her in two.

Almost. Even as she sobbed, she was already planning how she was going to end herself, to escape in the only way she knew how. There was nothing for her to hang herself from, but she could weave her clothes into some kind of self-strangulation knot, she knew she could. Maybe she could find a way to take Leo with her, if his cleaning up was going to be a regular thing.

She didn't look up as he left. Afterwards, she climbed into bed and waited for her father to come, ready to disappear the way she had so many times before.

There was something sharp digging into her tender hip.

For a second, she thought she'd gone insane. Leo's hands had been hanging loosely at his sides when he wasn't working, flat and empty. He'd literally had nowhere to hide a weapon, and no doubt would have been thoroughly searched before being let in to see to her.

Then she realized that the object was slick with something warm and wet: blood. And she remembered the ruin of his shell. All Leo would have needed was a second to brace a piece of furniture with one hand, hidden from the camera's sight, while tearing at himself with the other. He was strong, even in his wasted state. He could it pull it off.

And Karai didn't have a shock collar. After all her father had seen her done, after all the work he'd personally put into making a weapon, he somehow thought she was a weaker threat than Leo.

She slowly, carefully started working the shell into the lock of her shackles, hidden by the blanket. When she heard Saki coming, she just as carefully slid the shell under her pillow.

He bragged to her about Leo's destruction, about what a talented whore he had become under Tiger Claw's tutelage, and Karai just stared blankly at him. Finally, Saki got bored and switched to physical violence, bloodying her noise and dislocating one finger. Karai let him slam her cheek against the pillow, and thought she could feel the smallest bump of shard, strong and reassuring.

She got herself free a little while after her father had gone, when the room was dark. There were no pants in her room, so she pulled on the least restrictive dress she could carefully remove from the closet and pulled her grown-out hair into a loose ponytail.

She felt her way to the security camera and disconnected its wires by touch. With luck, the technicians would mistake a dark screen for a dark room.

And if she had no luck...well, it didn't matter. She slipped out the door and into the hall anyway.

Karai made her way through Foot Headquarters, dodging sentries and camera sights, gritting her teeth through the pain. She didn't bother making her way to the dungeons; she knew Leo wouldn't be there. Instead, she crept towards Tiger Claw's room. As she drew near the door, she could hear creaking and soft moans.

Leo lay on his back, staring at nothing with the same expression Karai had seen in the mirror far too many times. His limbs were shackled to the bed and dotted with fresh cuts. Tiger Claw moved on top of him, fur ruffled and sweat-slicked, lost in his own pleasure.

Leo's eyes didn't go to her, but he must have registered her presence somehow--heard the door opening, felt the cooler air from the hallway--because he surged upward with a wanton moan: _"Please, Master..."_ Their lips met in a messy, mismatched kiss as Karai closed the door behind her.

Karai stepped up behind Tiger Claw and dug her fingers into his fur, planning to yank his head back and cut his throat with the bit of shell. And then Leo twisted, shifting from gently lapping at Tiger Claw's mouth to sinking his teeth into his throat.

She shifted her grip to Tiger Claw's jaw, clamping it closed when he tried to release a shocked cry of pain. Leo snatched his head back, blood splashing down his chin and spilling across his plastron. His eyes were closed, face smoothed out with an expression of absolute bliss. He let out a quiet cry, and Karai saw his cock spasm in Tiger Claw's grip, cum mixing with the blood staining the orange-and-black fur.

Tiger Claw toppled with a groan and Karai caught him by the shoulders, directing his fall in a way that wouldn't crush Leo. He fell onto the bed with a soft thud, more blood dribbling out of his throat to soak the covers and darken the filthy sheets.

Leo glanced up at her, fear and shame flickering across his former dead expression. Karai gave him a reassuring smile. "You look beautiful this way," she told him, and she meant it.

She didn't ask him if he was okay. There was no point. Neither of them would ever be completely okay, not ever again.

She searched Tiger Claw's corpse, digging out the keys for Leo's restraints and finding the button to unlock his shock collar. He rose gingerly to his feet, tucking himself back in and rubbing the cum off his plastron as best he could (but not bothering to scrub off the blood).

Tiger Claw's swords and guns were too heavy for either of them to wield comfortably, so they divided up the knives. Leo spent a minute ripping up Tiger Claw's pants and fashioning them into a mask. Karai knew they needed to move quickly, but she also knew that he needed to do this, so she just waited by the door in silence.

They'd only been creeping through the hallways for a few minutes before the alarms started roaring. "Someone found the camera I fucked up," Karai muttered, just before the first wave of ninja descended on them.

The ninja had numbers, armor, and intact bodies on their side, but Leo and Karai were more skilled and a thousand times more desperate. They sprinted through the halls, slicing and stabbing anything in their path. In the distance, Karai thought she could hear the Shredder roar, a sound that chilled her blood.

Perhaps that was what threw her off her game, made her take a wrong turn. Whatever the reason, they ended up skidding through an open doorway with a herd of soldiers on their heels, and it wasn't before the smell of chemicals and antiseptic hit Karai's nose that she realized she'd led Leo into a trap.

He spun while she was still frozen with horror, slamming the lab's door shut and triggering the automatic locking system. He shoved a table in front of it, not that that would do anything to keep Saki out when he came knocking.

Baxter Stockman dropped his beaker. "What the fu--" Karai threw her last knife, splitting his head open and sending him crashing to the floor with a gurgle.

For a moment, she just stood there, panting. She could hear Leo frantically dashing around the room, pounding on the walls, searching for a way out. There was none.

He came back to stand in front of her, that dead expression settling back into his eyes. "He's going to hurt us for what we've done," he said, crumbling the blood that had already started to dry between his fingers. "Hurt us in ways we can't even imagine." The drone was starting to slink back into his voice.

Karai nodded, shoulders sagging. "Yeah."

Leo held up a knife, twirling it between his fingers. "On three, then?" She didn't need to ask what he was talking about. The idea of suicide had become as familiar to them as thoughts of freedom during their captivity. After all, wasn't they really the same thing at this point?

She turned to rip her knife out of Stockman, only to jerk to a halt.

There was a syringe of mutagen in a box on the table.

Leo followed her eyes, lowering his knife. He swallowed. "Karai--" There was a loud bang on the door behind them, and it quivered on its frame. She could definitely hear the Shredder screaming now.

She held the syringe up, turning it over thoughtfully in her hands. There was a bit of rubbing alcohol buried among all Stockman's crap and Karai started rubbing it, almost absentmindedly, on her neck.

"Retromutagen doesn't work on Splinter," Leo told her, looking down at his stolen sword. He couldn't meet her eyes, too overwhelmed with guilt over what was about to happen. "It might not work on you." There was more banging, more rattling, a stream of incoherent threats.

"Oh, please," Karai said, gesturing at herself. "Do you think I'd even _want_ this body, at this point? It's a mess, really. I should be jumping at the chance to trade it in." She kept her voice light, but he glanced up unexpectedly and she knew he could see the tears in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he breathed. "I'm so sorry, for every--"

"Don't be ridiculous," she cut him off, tangling her fingers in his mask. "It's not your fault. It's not mine, either." She pulled him in for a kiss, something cautious and tender and lovely.

"We didn't start this," Karai reminded him, pulling away. "But we can finish it." She jabbed the needle into her neck, collapsing with a scream of pain just as the door came crashing down.

From a great distance, she could hear Leo and Shredder shrieking invectives at each other, hear the clanging of blades. And then it was all drowned out by the roar in her head as her genetic code rewrote itself, splintering and reforming into something that had never been seen before, the birth of a new species on the cold tile floor. Her soft, broken skin was molting away, replaced by flawless scales that looked brighter than the stars and felt stronger than steel.

She screamed, but this time it was a roar of triumph.

Leo crashed to the floor shell first, skittering across the cold tile and clutching his ribs. Shredder stalked towards him, claws high, reading to administer the final blow.

And then Karai exploded out from under the table and her not-father was slammed against the wall by thirty-plus feet of snake.

He twisted away from her and rolled to his feet, eye wide with horror through his helmet. "Karai, what have you _done_ to yourself?"

"Evolved," she said simply, and her snake hands sunk into the unprotected skin as his arms.

He screamed as she pumped him of full poison, jittering and writhing in a terrible dance. Some Foot soldiers tried to push in through the door and Karai swung the Shredder at them like a brick, sending them rolling.

Saki tried to rally, digging his claws into her skin, but she just kept twisting around, bouncing him off the lab's walls pinball style and keeping him from getting a grip. She heard a bottle of something dangerous shatter, heard the soft _whump_ of flames, and didn't really care.

" _Karai,"_ the Shredder finally begged, limbs twitching uselessly at his side as she dragged him towards her. "My love, my life, please..."

"Hussssh, Daddy," she crooned through a snake's mouth, unhinging her jaw. "Time for bed."

She bit his head off, then immediately spat it out and tossed the remains to the side. She didn't want any of him inside her, not ever again.

"Karai?" Leo tried to sit up, only to fall back with a groan of pain as she slithered towards him. Blood was dripping from her arms, but she just ripped up a towel from the lab's wall and tied them tight.

"Up you go," she murmured, scooping Leo up bridal-style. He made a show of squirming, but she could hear his broken bones grinding together and knew that it would too much for him to move.

She could hear the fire spiraling out of control behind her, but didn't bother looking back as they left the lab. Ninja got in their way, but Karai just snapped their bones with her tail or stretched her incredibly long neck so she could rip out their throats.

They watched from the street as Foot headquarters went up in flames, the heat soft and gentle on their skin. "It's so pretty," Leo whispered, his voice _thrumming_ pleasantly through her chest. "Yeah" Karai replied.

She wished she had a phone so she could send a picture to Shini. Then she remembered that Shini was part of the past, and had to shove the thought away before it could hurt her battered soul. She'd think about Shini later, when she was strong enough.

There was sirens in the distance, so Karai flipped open a manhole cover with her tail and lowered them into the dark. She made her way through the sewers, no longer needing light to see. She hadn't spent much time down here, but she could catch the faintest waft of Leo's brothers' scents, and followed it like the biological GPS it was. "We're going home," she reassured him.

For a while, they traveled through the dark in silence. And then Leo spoke: "Splinter will know." His voice was choked, heavy with tears. "He'll smell it on me. He'll know I've lost my honor."

"Don't be dramatic," Karai said, one of her snake-heads planting a soft kiss on his temple. "I lossst--fuck, I've got to work on that--my 'honor' long before you brought me home and it didn't bother him."

"That's different. You didn't know you were a captive, for the most part, and...and you're a girl."

Karai glanced down at him. "You really think that'll matter?"

"To him, yeah." Leo sighed. "He's...old-fashioned." She knew that old-Leo would never admit to his father having flaws, but old-Leo had died in Tiger Claw's bed. Just as old-Karai had died in the Shredder's bed, over and over again.

"Well, if he starts talking sss-- _shit_ , I'll just beat him up," Karai said. New-Leo relaxed at the words. "Thanks, Karai," he murmured.

He shifted his head until it fit into the curve of her arm. "I hope my brothers are okay. They must be feeling terrible about not being able to rescue us. I'll have to keep an eye on them, make sure they're not going to hurt themselves over this." Ah, so new-Leo still had a burning desire to love and protect these assholes.

"I'll keep an eye on them," Karai promised. Sure they were assholes, but she was stuck with them, at least for now, so she might as well be helpful. Leo planted a soft kiss on her hand in gratitude.

A couple minute later, he spoke again. "I don't...I don't know how they'll react to," his breath caught, "this. What happened to me, to you. Donnie will figure it out right away, and Raph and Mikey--I don't know if they'll be able to smell it on me or what. I...I honestly can't remember if I smell different than, than before. And the blood...they'll know I'm a killer. I don't know how they'll take that."

She shrugged, lifting him gently up and down. "They'll probably be more worried about the homiss- _cidal_ sss-snake carrying you home."

He let out a soft laugh that cut off with a wince of pain. "Oh, that's fine. If they handled Leatherhead they can handle you. And..." He ran a soft hand over her scales. "You're lovelier like this than you've ever been, Karai."

She stared down at him. "Really?" She knew he was serious, of course, she could hear his heartbeat, but it was still shocking.

"Yeah." He reached up to touch her cheek. "When we get home...can, can you promise not to leave again?"

She took a breath. He wasn't just asking her to stay, he was asking her to _trust_. Trust him, trust his father, trust his family that they would learn to except for who she was and what she'd become. 

But...Leo had already put so much trust in her already, when he'd had no reason to. And now he was trusting her again, to help put him back together and let him do the same.

"I'll try," she promised, running a snake hand over his mask tails. He leaned into the touch.

Her other arm accidentally brushed the brand, and he stiffened. "Do...do you think Donnie will be able to get rid of it?"

"Maybe not, maybe not. Maybe you can jussst add a Hamato mark on the other one, you know? Ssshaped by two clans, and," she gritted her teeth, " _stronger_ than both."

He shifted. "That's--that's pretty clever."

"I have my momentsssss," Karai replied, voice loaded with false majesty.

His hand traveled down her chest. He didn't touch her with the bruising grip of the Shredder; his touch was light and delicate, as if examining a work of art. "'Stronger than both,'" he repeated. "Just like you."

They turned the corner, and now the smell of the Lair was getting strong. She could pick up on his family's anxious heartbeats. "They'll acss-accept you," she said firmly. If she knew anything about Leo's brothers, it was that they had ridiculously big hearts and an endless capacity to put up with weird shit. "And than they'll take me in, too. If they don't, then they can go fuck themselvesss; we'll be fine on our own. And Ss- _Splinter_ can go fuck himssself, too."

"I believe you," he said, curling up against her belly. "I--I think I might love you, Karai."

She bent down to plant a kiss on his cheek. "I think I might love you, too, Leo."

They held on to each other as she approached the Lair's door, the way they would hold on to each other so often during the many days and nights of recovery to come.

Karai opened the door with her tail, and they returned home together.


	21. I Can't Explain Myself Because I'm Not Myself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the ashes of the world, two damaged people cross paths and start crawling out of the dark.

His name was Maximus Kong. It was kind of a silly name, but it was his, and he liked it. It scared people into listening to him, meaning that things got done, and he'd always been the type of person who liked getting things done.

He thought he might have had another name, in the time before the sky burned green and the world turned upside down. He didn't like thinking about that name. The past was a heap of burning broken shards at the back of his head and it hurt too much to pick through them.

So he was Maximus, sealing his old self behind layers of armor. People tried to hurt or control him as he made his way through the wasteland, so he killed them and built a kingdom on their bones. They began to call him a warlord, and the term reminded him of _leader_ so he decided to keep it.

He buried the past deep, until he had started to forget that there was a past at all. He wasn't happy, exactly, but he was getting things done, and he supposed that was a type of happiness.

Then he heard rumors of the snake.

The snake had two heads: a human one with long black hair, and a serpent one with fierce red eyes. Her body was that of a snake, but it sprouted two human arms.

The human head was crazy, in the unabashed way of people who know that they are crazy and have given up on doing anything about it. She muttered nonsense to herself, broken bits of memory mixing with wild imaginings to create a kind of freestyle verse. _Daddy's candy Daddy's steel a billion sharp edges falling forever green burning green_

The snake head was the one who looked for food (sometimes the food walked on two legs, but only if they were desperate), who did her best to hide from strangers and find them a place to sleep. The snake head would listen to the human head talk to herself until they both fell asleep, both wishing they could remember more of the past.

One day, they were captured by other mutants and placed in a cage. Even in this bizarre new world two-headers were rare, and creatures who still had some human skin left were even rarer. There were plans to put her up for auction; there was always someone willing to pay a good price to turn that precious skin into a potion or good-luck charm.

Maybe the snake could have picked the lock with her human hands, but she wasn't thinking very clearly at the time. The presence of bars around her overwhelmed both heads, plunging them into a dark screaming rabbit hole of _no no no no no._ She turned endless circles in her cage, hissing and spitting, barely hearing the voices of the mutants making plans to divide up her body.

When Maximus heard about the snake, the desire to track her down was immediate and irresistible. He suspected that he'd spent a lot of time looking for a snake in the past, but for some reason the prospect didn't hurt his head the way other familiar things did.

The haggling crowd stilled as he drew near, great lumbering steps shaking the ground. He could have been quieter if he wanted to, but he didn't want to. A cruel part of him like saying the fear in their eyes; he'd spent a lot of time hiding from crowds and he enjoyed the sensation of making up that.

"L-lord Maximus!" The otter in charge of the cage staggered backward at the sight of him. "T-to w-what do we owe the pleas--" Maximus held up a massive hand, cutting him off.

He knelt in front of the cage, peering through the bars. Both heads hissed and spat at him, backing as far away as they could.

His gaze was fixed on the human head. He _knew_ those eyes, had stared at them through bars before (from both sides). The sensations those eyes brought were foggy, distant...but they weren't painful.

Maximus instantly knew that this snake was dangerous, but for some reason it didn't feel like a threat to crush or tame. It felt _different_ , very different, different in a way that he couldn't quite put his finger on, but didn't really fear. In fact, he wanted to explore this difference.

He ripped off the cage door, ignoring the manager's startled squeak, and stuck a massive paw through the door. The snake instantly stuck sharp fangs into his metal glove, but he didn't notice. "Do you want to stay here?" he asked, his voice low and soft. He knew that the crowd was startled to hear Maximus Kong speak below a roar, but he didn't care.

The snake didn't, so reluctantly she allowed him to pull her tired, battered body out of the cage and gently fold it in his arms. He strode off without a look back.

When they were a decent distance from the crowd, the snake twisted free and slithered off into the desert. The snake head stared fixedly ahead, while the human head shot wild glances to see how close he was behind her.

She jittered to a stop, shocked, when she realized that Maximus wasn't in pursuit. Instead he was kneeling on the dusty sand floor, and his posture sent the word _seiza_ ringing through her mind. He was taking off his helmet, although if you asked him why he was doing such a potentially dangerous thing he wouldn't have been able to tell you.

The sunlight shone on his face and...

Green. Green green green. He was green like a jade staff and algae on dark walls, a lighter green than her own eyes and a darker green than the piercing light of mutagen. His was the green of a face seen through crossed blades, a face that shifted through curiosity to lust to desperation as it shutter-stopped in her memories.

His was the green of _memory,_ and she whimpered as the wild thoughts and images crashed down. But she did not slither away.

Looking at him made her think of a kiss, of a mouth still wet with her adopted father's blood. And that memory held her there like a magnet.

He just sat there, waiting, a small mountain of steel and flesh. It dawned on her that he was the kind of person who could wait a very long time.

Eventually, she approached him, carefully wormed her way up his armor and around his shoulders. She didn't know who he was, anymore than she knew who she was. All she knew was that she had been alone for so very long, and here was someone who might take her aloneness away without extracting a cruel price. She suspected that he felt the same.

He didn't say anything, just replaced his helmet and rose to his feet. He walked off into the dark, to the place where his men had laid camp.

"What do you call yourself?" he asked, after a while.

"Lamia," said the human head. It was the name she had gotten from a witch, a witch that she couldn't really stand to think of because the witch was dead and the memories threatened to drag her into a searing pit of grief. But she could remember the name without fear.

He cocked his head thoughtfully, then replied. "I am Maximus."

"It doesn't suit you." The words came automatically, and she was surprised at how the s's didn't hiss.

He shrugged his great shoulders, gently lifting her up and down, and she resisted the urge to squeal like a little girl. "I don't think Lamia fits on you, either."

"Well, that's _your_ opinion," she muttered, burying her face in the hollow of his neck. She felt his soft chuckle _thrumming_ through her cheek, and snickered back in reply.

From that day on, they were inseparable. Lamia would sunbathe on Maximus' shoulders, her two heads hissing and murmuring to each other or to him. When he slept, she would curl up on his stomach or his shell, enjoying the slow movements of his breathing.

They had sex a few times. It was a weird, awkward process, involving the creative placement of tails and tongues and massive hands. The physical experience was pleasant enough, but resulting rush of emotions usually reduced them both to tears, and it always took a while before they could psyche themselves up to do it again.

Together, they became a terror to behold on the battlefield. The few surviving warriors whispered tales about Maximus' incredible strength and brutal skill, Lamia's blinding speed and sword-sharp fangs. They fought with the kind of viciousness that is unique to people who have lost fights in the past and know the dark cost of defeat all too well.

After battles they would carefully scrub the blood off each other, their movements careful and practiced.

"We've done this before," Lamia said. "Before you took me out of that cage, we did this for each other." Maximus looked down, unable to meet her eyes. It was the first time either of them had admitted, out loud, that they had known each other before they'd met in the wasteland. The first time either had admitted that they'd _had_ lives before the wasteland.

The concept was frightening and intoxicating all at once.

Most of their conversations were about the here and now, discussing battle strategies or the treatment of subordinates. When they started discussing the past, they had to tread very carefully. Move too fast, focus on too many painful things, and one or both of them risked breaking down in screaming or crying or frantic gasping for air.

Once, Lamia broke Maximus's finger and slithered away, threatening to bite her own throat if he came after her. She spent three days babbling to herself as she slithered in circles, shaking under the weight of memories he had accidentally stirred up, memories of acidic mutagen and cold bright worms and a father's bruising hands. Eventually, the pain and confusion faded enough for her to starting missing him, and she slithered back to his side.

Once, Maximus threw Lamia out of his car, his battered mind confusing her for a demon with metal claws. After he finally regained himself, he forced the convoy to stop while he went to track Lamia down and slowly, carefully coax her into his arms.

As time passed, discussing the memories they had of each other was no longer quite so painful. There were huge gaps, but they could look into those gaps without fear.

Then came the day when they heard new rumors, rumors of two turtles, a robot, and a meerkat girl who held the key to paradise.

"We should go," Lamia said, her human head whispering through the slots in Maximus' helmet while the snake head studied the mutant who had brought the news.

"Really?" he asked, his voice rumbling through her slender bones. "You never struck me as one who'd want to settle down in paradise."

" _Turtles,"_ she reminded him. "Turtles like you. Aren't you curious?"

Maximus' breath caught a little. "I...I don't want to think about it," he admitted.

"I know," Lamia said. She knew all too well the anger and pain that came from having to pick through sharp-edged memories. "But I can help you if you start to crumble. And if it gets too much we can just kill them more quickly. That usually fixes things."

He couldn't argue with that, so he adjusted her coils so that they fit more comfortably over his armor and they went turtle-hunting.

While Maximus battled the big red turtle, Lamia chased the little meerkat. She was lost in the battle haze, to the point that it never even occurred to her to empathize with the child frantically fleeing from her snapping teeth and tail, to remember what it was like to a be girl running for her life.

Then a blur of bright metal slammed out of nowhere, knocking her to the side. Lamia thrust herself upright, glaring at the looming steel robot. A more formidable opponent, this one, but she was stronger than she looked and more than capable of tearing it to pieces--

_"Karai?"_

The name.

The _name._

Her body froze, but her mind exploded into burning howling _noise._ She heard that name repeated again and again and _again_ , echoing from a dozen throats:

_Karai, my daughter..._

_Karai,_ my _daughter..._

_Are you okay, Karai?_

_Karai doesn't recognize us!_

_KaraI, no!  
_

_Karai, this isn't you, he brainwashed you._

_Forgive me, Karai._

_He's dead, Karai. I'm so sorry._

_He's dead, Karai. We're safe now._

_Let the Foot die, Karai. Please._

_I love you, Karai._

_Karai Karai Karai Karai Kar--_

"SHUT UP!" ~~Lamia Karai Lamia~~ the snake charged him, screaming. She swung and snapped her powerful jaws, but she couldn't see clearly with the tears running down her cheeks and the agony splintering through her head.

In the distance, she could Maximus screaming, and instinctively _knew_ that he was experiencing the same thing, the same terrible sense of drowning in the past. Everything that had been tucked away, good and bad, was pouring down on their heads, and it was so _much_.

It would have driven them mad if they weren't already crazy.

There was an explosive boom behind them, the kind that Lamia had gotten used to, only now she was already off balance and was sent flying on her tail. She crashed into the dirt, shaking and gasping. The robot pulled her into its strong metal arms, trying to keep her from hurting herself.

"It's okay, Karai," he whispered, mechanical voice choked with static in place of tears. "It's okay. You're back with us, now. You're _home."_

They're still inseparable these days. Often, when the memories come rushing down, all they can do is cling to each and ride other out the storm.

Sometimes Maximus will battle Leo for dominance, snarling and tearing, until Karai brings him back under control by binding him with shining coils and chiding hisses. Sometimes Lamia will fight with Karai, screaming and biting, until Leo catches her in his gentle, firm grip for however long she needs.

They were never ones to settle down in paradise, but they both appreciate having a safe place to heal. And they slowly grow to love the family, old and new, that they share this precious green island.

Leo and Karai are the Green Place's first line of defense, keeping it safe from the many foes snapping at its borders. They're left in charge when Donnie and Raph got to find April and Casey, scanning the horizon every day until the last members of their family return home.

At night they sleep folded together, slowly growing more comfortably with their own and each other's new bodies. They start having sex more often, long frightened of their memories and emotions. Sometimes they have bad dreams, but they're never alone when they wake up.

The past becomes more bearable, and the present becomes less confusing, until they're finally ready to face the future together.


	22. In The Forest Dark And Deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How do you fix the unfixable?

The Shredder hits Leo, and he breaks into a million tiny pieces. He shatters under the weight of pounding fists and feet, under the crushing humiliation and utter helplessness.

When he wakes up, his head is full of sharp edges that scrape and cut when he tries to think. Shredder's hands clutch and bruise his skin like angry ghosts, and sometimes Leo thinks he can still see the bruises. He feels breath on his neck when no one's there, he glimpses archers out of the corners of his eyes when that's just not possible, he'll feel so _cold_ and his leg _hurts_ even though Donnie says they'll get a knee brace and _why does his voice sound different?_

But he's _fine._ He knows he's fine. All he has to do is power through this, get back to normal. He _has_ to, there's no choice, not when they have a city to save and their safe haven just happens to be surrounded by monsters.

For a while, he keeps himself under control. He smothers his nightmares in his pillow, he heads to his room to "meditate" when he feels the onset of a panic attack. He does a good job, and he knows Splinter would be proud of him.

Then he's brushing his teeth one day when the door creaks open. He tenses, muscles screaming _danger danger danger_ , but he forces himself to spit and rinse because it's _ridiculous_ to think that Oroku Saki would follow them out here.

And then he looks in the mirror and the demon is standing behind him, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder and Leo _can feel him_ warm and real and horribly alive...

Leo screams grabs his sword whips around oh god how did he get here _where are the others_ what what did he _do_ no no no he slams the demon against the wall _I will kill him_

"Dude?"

It's Mikey.

Mikey is standing there with Leo's sword pressed against his throat. Mikey is standing there and Mikey looks _scared._

"It's okay..."

It's not okay. It's not okay because the house may be surrounded by monsters, but there's a monster _in_ the house too, a monster that no one ever saw coming, not even the monster himself.

Leo staggers backward, shell slamming against the wall. "I have to go," he whispers.

"I'm sorry," Mikey reaches for him and Leo smacks his hand away, viciously, because monsters are vicious. "Don't touch me, I'm not, I'm not _safe."_

He stagger-limps out of the room, down the stairs, out of the house. He lets the forest swallow him up.

Leo runs until the pain makes him literally pass out. He wakes up to the sound of voices and awkwardly scrambles up into a tree, out of sight. They don't look for him among the leaves, because ~~he's a cripple he can barely walk why should he be able to climb~~ he blends in so well.

They call his name as they walk, shout into the greenery as if they suspect he can hear them. Donnie tells him that it's not his fault, rambles about PTSD as if that can somehow change what Leo did. Raph tells him to stop being a moron and get his ass back here. Mikey says _sorry_ so many times that Leo wants to come down, tell him it's not his fault, but this is the only way he can keep his little brother safe.

He's the eldest, and Master Splinter made him the leader. That means he knows best, that he has a responsibility to detect threats and protect them. He is a threat, so he needs to protect them from himself.

He waits until they're gone, and then he stays up there a little while longer, just in case they fall back. Eventually, he falls asleep.

When he wakes up, Karai is wrapped around the branch, staring at him.

Leo falls out of the tree with an unmanly shriek, snagging a branch just before he slams his crippled leg against the ground. Karai peers down at him thoughtfully as she slithers down the trunk, her green eyes glinting like emeralds in the morning light. _Beautiful **,**_ Leo thinks.

He carefully lowers himself to the ground and backs away, picking bugs off of his shell. "Karai....?" he asks cautiously. "Do you...do you know how I am?" Karai says nothing, just turns and starts to slither away, her tail wagging in a mocking goodbye.

"Don't go," Leo says, a spurt of panic flaring up in him at the thought of being left alone. There's an immediate urge to take it back and he pushes it away. He may be a monster, but he realizes that he's not scared of hurting her. Karai could take him before her transformation, and now she's a thousand times more powerful. He's no threat to _her._

Karai seems to realize this as well, because she turns back to him, lowering herself in a coil and peering at him curiously.

"Are you..." Leo shuffles his feet in the dirt. "Are you okay?" Immediately he knows that that was a ridiculous question, of course--Shredder broke her just as badly as he did Leo, albeit in a different way. "Are you _hurt?"_ he clarifies, scanning her body for any visible signs of sickness or injury.

Karai cocks her largest head, then shakes it no.

"Did you follow us?" he asks. He doesn't _think_ that Karai is a threat to his family, but, well...Leo didn't think _he_ was a threat to them, until recently.

She somehow manages to shrug her scaly shoulders. "Vehicle," she says, her voice a low rumble that sounds like water on stone. The sound makes Leo's skin tingle pleasantly and he shakes himself.

"You followed the Shellraiser?" he hypothesizes. Karai nods carefully. "Sssssmell," she hisses, the word forced out with a clear sense of effort.

Leo blinks. All the modification Donnie's made probably gives the Shellraiser a distinctive scent, but still... "That's amazing," he says honestly.

Karai cocks her head again, as if surprised to be called amazing. Then she narrows her eyes and gives him a significant look, then jerks her head in what Leo thinks is the general direction of the house.

"I...," Leo hugs himself. "After you left, Shredder hurt me. Did you know about that?" Karai nods, and he decides to table _how_ she knew for later. "I haven't been the same since. I almost hurt Mikey, and I'm scared of it happening again."

"Ssssstay?" she asks, giving him a look, and Leo just _knows_ she finds the idea of him hiding in the woods for the rest of his life to be ridiculous. Maybe because it is.

"Not forever," he says firmly. "Just until I can figure _this_ out." He taps the side of his head. "Until I can get better."

Karai shakes her head, slithering towards him, and Leo forces himself not to back away. She extends one arm-head, a tiny tongue poking him in the forehead. "Thisss...you, forever," she grits out, before tapping her own temple. "Trusssst me. I _know."_

Leo shakes his head, staring at her. "Then what am I supposed to do?"

She just looks at him, and he knows she doesn't have an answer. Karai turns away, slithering slowly into the undergrowth.

When Leo follows, she lets him.

He grabs some food from a campsite. Splinter told him that stealing from humans was not a great sin in times of distress, and besides, he's not taking much. He won't need much.

Karai's gone when he gets back. She returns a little while later with red in the cracks of her scales and a little bit of deer fur drifting around her mouth. Leo decides not to bring it up. How Karai's been surviving for so long is none of his business.

She watches him as he eats and exercises in the woods, going through an array of katas, She turns away whenever he's about to use the bathroom, which is a relief. Otherwise, though, those beautiful eyes are fixated on him.

Soon sun's going down and Leo's leg is throbbing, but he thinks he can squeeze out twenty more minutes of training. Then he hears the loud _crack_ of a tail being slashed through the air like a whip, and throws himself on the grass with a sigh. "Fine," he mutters like a petulant child.

Karai slithers up besides him, coiling around herself as Leo pats down the grass into a half-decent bed. He's not a mammal, so at least he doesn't have to worry about ticks.

When he's lying down, he finally feels comfortable enough to ask "How did you know I was hurt?" And immediately regrets it, because what if this is the question that sends her slithering away for some reason?

But Karai just murmurs, "Watched."

"You watched us?" he asks.

Karai shifts so that she's leaning over him, giving him a significant _look._ "Watched _you,"_ she says. "Bathroom window."

"Okay," Leo says, not sure what to think of that. Karai flops back down beside him, her white length stretching off into the shadows.

They watch the stars come out together, and before Leo can stop himself he says, "You know, sometimes I dream about getting to go up there."

She looks at him, and Leo winces, feeling a hot blush flow across his face. "I mean...there's the show I watch called _Space Heroes_ that's set in, you know, space, and it always looks so beautiful..." He looks away, waiting for her to tell him what a dork he is like everyone else does.

But instead she says, "More."

Leo glances at her in surprise. "More? You want me to tell you more." She nods.

"O--okay," Leo leans back and starts telling her about the show, about Captain Ryan and his heroism and how Leo quietly ships him with the not-so-emotionless Dr. Mindstrong, about Dr. O'Conner who always reminds him of Donnie, about the dedication of Elsie the engineer and the skill of Helmsman Nakamura, the humor of Lieutenant Rostov and the absolute awesomeness of Lieutenant Adébáyọ̀. He tells her about the planets they've visited and the universes they've seen, and points out some of the constellations in Earth's own humble sky.

He falls asleep talking, with her breath in her ear, and feels safer than he has in a long while.

Leo is running through the woods with Shredder hard on his heels, hands slapping at impossibly slick trunks. He can't get a grip, can't find somewhere to hide, and he can't turn to fight because then he'll die.

The Shredder laughs, booming impossibly loud, and Leo screams as the vibrations shatter his bones all over again. He falls to his knees, sobbing and pain in terror. It hurts so bad and the shadows looming over him, drowning him in darkness, he _can't breathe--_

And then's he awake, he ~~thinks~~ knows he is, and he still can't breathe, the monster is coming...

But there are silver-white coils are around him, soft yet strong, pulling him into a warm embrace like nothing he's ever felt and never wants to leave. "Breathe," Karai whispers in his ear. "Ssssafe...." And slowly, surely, Leo comes back to himself.

When it's over Leo lies tense, expecting Karai to slither away in disgust at his weakness. But she just holds on to him, running a gentle tongue over the top of his head that makes him squirm pleasantly. "Ssssafe," she repeats, and then, "Sssstrong."

Slowly, he relaxes and lets himself fall asleep again.

In the morning, he's still snugly wrapped in Karai's coils. She lets him go and turns away, letting him rise to his feet. Neither of them mention the incident.

(Leo thanks god that mutant turtles don't get morning wood).

Their days sink into an odd sort of rhythm. Leo trains and meditates as best he can, taking baths and drinking water from a nearby river. Karai usually sunbathes or watches him, when she's not off to get a snack.

He talks to her, sometimes, when the silence gets too much. He tells her more about _Space Heroes,_ shares anecdotes about his family, reassures her that Splinter is--not _was,_ he's still alive _Leo knows he is-_ a great father.

She follows him back to the farmhouse when he leaves a note saying _I am safe, I love you_ on the back porch before dashing back into the woods. It feels kind of ridiculous, but he doesn't trust himself around his family yet, doesn't trust them to control him the way Karai can.

Sometimes, he has flashbacks and panic attacks, and she's the one who holds him. Wrapped up in her coils, Leo feels swaddled in an embrace that is unmistakably _hers_ , and thus unmistakably _safe._ She tells him to _breathe_ , that he is _strong_ and _safe_ and _okay._

She has panic attacks, too, on occasion. If it happens on night, Leo's usually wakened by the rippling of her skin against his, and figures out to roll away before it turns into full-on thrashing.

He can't touch her when she's like this, so Leo stands at a safe distance and tells her that everything's going to be okay, that she's safe, that the Shredder will never hurt her again. When she's calmed down, he goes to her side and holds her as tightly as he can.

"Okay," they say to each other, over and over again. "Okay. It's okay."

Sometimes they both have nightmares, and then their sleep schedule is out of whack. "Why didn't you wake me?" Leo mutters, staring up a sun that is very clearly in the center of the sky. Karai just groans and rolls back onto her stomach.

He lunges at her, once, and afterwards cowers in horror, stammering apologies and terrified that she'll leave him. Karai just rolls her eyes and pulls him into a hug, patting the top of his shell with her hand-mouth. "Thank you," Leo whispers, face buried in her chest.

A week in, Karai wraps her tail around his wrist when he's tucking his carefully wrapped bag of food back into the hollow of a tree. "Finisssssh," she orders.

Leo stares at her. "What?"

"Food," she orders, jerking her head at tree. "Too little. Thought you were ssssick, but--" She shakes her head. " _Eat."_

Leo sighs, because he _has_ been eating less recently, and he didn't want to explain why. "I'm trying to enter a vision state," he explains. "Master Splinter told me about it.. In some cultures, people can receive a higher state of consciousness by depriving themselves of material things. If I do that, I might figure out how to fix..." He gestures to himself. "...this."

Karai rolls her eyes. "Ssssstupid," she proclaims.

"It is _not,"_ Leo says, starting to march away, only for Karai's coils to flicker around him in a lightning-quick embrace. He jerks to a halt, squirming and pushing fruitlessly. "Hey!"

 _"_ You're getting _weak,"_ Karai growls, which is ridiculous. Sure, he's been a little lightheaded lately, and his stomach is killing him, but he is still _eating_ every day so... "I'm fine," he tells her.

" _Finissssssh,"_ she repeats.

"No!" He tries to twist free, but all he succeeds in doing is sending them both toppling back to earth. "Let me go!"

She gives him a sly look and runs her tail tip along the backs of his knees. Leo jerks to a halt, staring at her. "Are you trying to... _tickle_ me?"

Karai winks and sets about doing just that.

"No no no _stop,"_ Leo complains, feet drumming uselessly against the floor. "Don't-- _ha!"_ He lets out of a squeal of laughter, the kind he hasn't made since he was very small.

But he's the leader, he's on a _mission_ , he has no time for tickles, so he twists out of her arms and scrambles across the forest floor. Only for a coil to wrap around his waist and start dragging him backwards--before coming to an abrupt stop.

And then Leo realizes, very abruptly, that there is a small, distinctive bulge in his plastron. One that has never happened before, because Karai has never touched him when one of them is not in the throes of a panic attack before.

Karai lets him go and he twists around, blushing so hard his face feels like it's going to burn off. "I didn't--it's not--" He can't make himself look up at her, not able to face the disgust, the contempt, or worst of all the _laughter._ Because his crush on Karai has always been a joke, a shitty running gag, and why should that change now that she's in a different form?

But instead Karai lowers herself to his level, maybe even a little lower, and her face seems...shocked. Almost slack.

She tilts her head curiously. "You...you think....I'm pretty?" Each word trembles a little when it comes out, undoubtably with effort because it's definitely not emotion. Right?

"You are pretty," Leo says. The way her scales shine in the sun, the clever ferocity in her emerald eyes...how could she be anything other than pretty?

Karai extends a hand, a tongue flickering between her finger-jaws. It runs down his face, down his chest, slow and smooth in a way she's never touched him before. 

Her jaw twitches with what might be a smile, and the tongue slips between his legs, grinding into his slit.

 _"Oh!"_ Leo bucks, his shell _clonking_ against a tree trunk but it barely notices because _oh fuck oh shit_ it feel so _good._ Better than anything he's ever done to himself.

Karai runs her main tongue up his chest, a wicked glint in her eyes, and Leo lets out a soft churr as his tail unclenches and his penis spills into the open. Her hand-tongue laps and sucks at him, planting kisses along his length.

"Oh, God," Leo whispers, filling heat burn through him too quickly, almost painful. "Oh god, I'm going to--" Her grip tighter and the heat is cut off as Leo releases a soft squeak.

Then he's being lifted up by soft white coils and pushed against her chest. Leo runs his hands over her skin, feeling small and embarrassed and very, very turned on. An idea strikes him and he starts planting soft kisses on her neck, feeling a moan vibrate through her throat and into his mouth.

But he snaps his head away, trying to pull himself free. "We can't..." he whispers and Karai stills, eyes wide with concern. "You, do you want thisssss?" she asks cautiously, starting to loosen her grip.

"Of course I do, but....." _We're maybe sort of siblings._ _My brothers need me to focus on fixing my fuckups. I'm broken. I'm damaged. I'm not good for you. I'm a failure._ "....I don't deserve this," he forces out, feeling stupid even as he says it.

Karai raises an eyeridge. "Desssserve doessssn't matter," she points out, tightening back around him. "We _can,_ and we want to." She leans forward to kiss him, and Leo kisses back, unable to pull away because she feels like something sweet and precious.

Then he feels her _other_ hand-mouth slip under him, its spit-slicked tongue sliding into his entrance, and everything else disappears. Leo seizes in her arms, clinging on to her scaly sides for dear life. It feels so weird and so _fucking_ amazing _._ "Oh shit," he whispers, as it starts to move around _inside him,_ slicking and stretching him.

He looks into Karai's eyes, sees them blown-out and crazy, and realizes that she's lost herself as much as he has. And that gives him the strength to wrap himself around her, to start kissing her soft skin and rubbing her muscular back, to move with her as the hand-mouth is replaced by her honest-to-god _tail_. She hits a bundle of nerves inside him and they both scream.

For a few long, strange minutes they're nobody's children, there's no blood on their hands or failures at their feet. They're just two broken, beautiful monsters fucking in the woods, and that's enough.

Afterwards, they lie curled up on the forest floor in a sated little bundle. Then Karai reaches up and pulls down the packet of food, pressing it into his hand. Leo blinks at it. "Seriously?"

"People don't pick fightssss right after sssssex," she explains. "I'm taking advantage."

She's got a point, so Leo obediently helps himself.

As cliched as it sounds, he thinks the sex does make him feel a little better, his head a little clearer.

Karai seems to feel the same. "Higher ssssstate," she says triumphantly the next time they do it, after she follows him in the river for his bath. She taps both their foreheads, her eyes half-mocking and half-serious.

"Congratulations," Leo mutters, climbing out of the river and onto a sunny rock. And then he feels guilty, because why should he be smiling and having fun when his siblings need him to put himself together?

Karai sees his changing expression and raises an eyebrow.

Leo sighs, rubbing his arms. "Karai," he says. "When I...when I'm ready to go back, will you go with me?"

Karai stiffens and stares at him.

Leo looks down at his feet. "I...I don't know if I can really fix this," he admits, to her and himself. "Maybe you're right, maybe I am changed for good, but you...you help me, and you let me help you, and I don't want to change that. And I..." he works his fingers together nervously. "You can protect the others from me if I...if I get out of hand."

Karai stares at him for a few minutes, face silent and still. Then she shrugs, the motion rippling through her whole body. "Don't know....if I can," she admits. She taps the side of her head. "Loud memoriessss. Dangeroussss."

"They won't hurt you," Leo promises. "And I won't let you hurt them."

Karai looks at him for a few more minutes, then says, "I'll....think about ....it," in the tone of someone who'd like this conversation to be over now, please.

She slithers out of the water and heads into the woods, tossing "Getting lunch" over her should as an explanation.

"I'd like two fried deer hooves, please," Leo says, and she raises a hand-mouth over her shoulder, tongue sticking out in a pretty decent approximation of a middle finger.

Leo smiles and sits back on the rock, folding into the lotus position. He rests his hands on his knees, one healthy and one tingling ever so slightly.

He closes his eyes and breathes...breathes...breathes...

Slowly, surely, he rises ever higher. Over the course of minutes or days or hours he lets go of material things, as the world melts into a mystical shade of grey.

He's standing on a mountainside, wind rippling through his cloak as he hears a rumble in the distance.

And then he hears Karai screaming.

Leo's sprinting through the woods, not even registering the leap from the rock and across the river. He barely remembers how to place his feet lightly on the forest floor, so as not to be heard by whoever or whatever has proven a threat to _her._

He skids to a stop at the sight of Karai in a clearing, hissing and spitting from within the bruising confines of a shining steel net. A pig and a rhino _(what the fuck)_ stand looking up at her, laughing and joking.

"I _told_ you that Buzzfeed wasn't bullshit," says the pig, purple mohawk gleaming proudly. He pats Karai's shining white side, stepping away before she can bite his head off. "Aw, don't be sad, sweetheart. I bet Daddy's gonna buy you a new pink convertible when you get home."

_Shit. Shit shit shit._

He darts out of the shadows and sprints towards them, hands raised to deliver nerve pinches. So of _course_ the rhino chooses that moment to turn around and scream a curse in Russian, grabbing a scythe (a _scythe?_ Is he _trying_ to be a walking stereotype?) from his back.

Leo grabs his swords, spinning one blade to deflect the pig's darts while the other clashes and clangs against the rhino's scythe. He's off balance fighting them both, pressing in on him like archers and Tiger Claw and Rahzar and-- _fucking focus!_

He lunges, cutting the pig's gun in half, but the scythe hooks around his sword and Leo has to let before his arm is broken. He backs away from them as the pig pulls out a hammer, while Karai lets out frustrated shrieks as she shoves at the surface of the net.

"You are boyfriend, da?" says the rhino. "Boss wants your freaky little head on spike." He chuckles, and Leo grits his teeth because he _refuses_ to die at the hands of these two goons, not while Karai needs him.

He throws a star and the rhino screams, but it doesn't break his tough skin and then they're charging him, bruises and cuts opening on Leo's body and he's going to die, it's the construction site all over again and he's going to--

Karai lets out a howl, twisting her body to slam the net against the tree and sending vibrations through the trunk, snapping a branch with a massive _crack._ The pig and rhino still for a second, caught off balance, and Leo draws a full breath because he's _not_ alone, he will never ever be alone again.

He takes the opportunity to lunge, slicing through the rhino's fingers. The creature drops to his knees with a roar, clutching his hand as the scythe clatters to earth. He slices the hammer in half and the pig hops backward, drawing another gun right before Leo chops off his head. A hot arterial fountain splashing across his face as the pig collapses with a gurgle.

"Drop it!" Leo turns to see the rhino pressing his bloody hand to his chest while the other one holds a gun, a real one this time, pointing it at Karai. She's swinging in the net, but she's simply too big a target.

"Now," says the rhino. "You be good freak and drop sword." 

Leo hesitates for only a second before tossing the sword aside with a groan.

"Very good," says the rhino. "Now get on knees and put hands on head, like cop shows. Then families are reunited and I get money and we live happily ever--"

His words are cut off as Leo snatches another star from under his wrist wrappings and sends it flying across the clearing, straight into the rhino's gaping mouth. He lets out a choked howl, gun going off as he staggers backward.

Karai screams and Leo screams, too. The net splits from being torn by the bullet and Karai slithers onto the floor, shaking and thrashing.

Leo dashes to her side and drops to his knees as the rhino twitches through his death throes besides them. He doesn't know what to do, doesn't have any experience with this shit _why the fuck doesn't he?_ He scans for entrance and exist wounds, not sure how much he should touch her.

Fuck vision quests, he needs to get her back to help now. "Karai," he begs, as her red eyes slide weakly over to him. "Karai, can you move?"

She tries, vibrations rumbling through her massive body, only to fall back to earth with a cry of pain.

Leo shrieks in frustration. He doesn't have a hope in hell of carrying her, and he could make everything so much worse by dragging her. "I'm sorry," he whispers, hands sliding across her scales as he follows the trails of blood, trying to touch lightly, to not hurt her more than he already has. "So fucking sorry...."

"Not...fault..." Karai grits out.

Leo doesn't bother arguing. "Where does it hurt?" he asks. And in response, Karai lets out a groan of concentration before starting to _shrink._

He tumbles backward in pure shock as her body coils and melts in on itself, skin smoothing and darkening before his eyes.

Before Leo can even wonder if he's hallucinating, the massive, three-headed snake has been replaced by a very human, very naked girl curled up on the leaves. Her hair fans out around her head, much longer than Leo remembers, and blood streams from two holes (exit wounds, thank Kame) on opposite sides of her torso.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Leo breathes, but he's already reaching under her and pulling her to his chest. He sprints through the woods, towards home, trying so hard not to jostle and wincing every time she lets out a soft groan.

"Hold on," Leo whispers, saying it like a prayer. "Hold on, please...."

By the time he kicks in the farmhouse door, Leo's on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion.

"What the actual _fuck--_ is that _Karai?"_ Leo ignores Raph as he gently shoves Karai into a very startled Donnie's arms. "She got shot by a rhino," he gasps out.

Everyone else is asking question, but Donnie collects himself with spectacular grace and carries Karai into the kitchen, ordering Leo to clear the table while sending April into the barn to get his supplies. Leo does as he's told, hands shaking.

Then there's nothing to do except sit in the living room and hope while Donnie works on Karai. Or rather, sit in the living room and be lectured by a cacophony of friends and siblings about what the fuck were you _thinking_ Leo hiding in the woods like fucking Walden for over a _week_ leaving notes like fucking _preschool_ we should chain you to your _bed_ where did Karai even _come_ from why isn't she a snake anymore why is she _naked_ OMG did you guys do the kissy stuff out there is that why you were gone so long--

Raph punches Mikey in the head before he can finish the question and hauls Leo into the bathroom, scrubbing blood off his hands and plastron. Leo has to shove him aside halfway through and go throw up.

"I killed them," he admits afterwards, resting his head against the toilet seat. "The pig and the rhino. I killed them and it might not be worth it, she might--"

"Hey," Raph kneels by his side and takes Leo's chin in his hand. "That bitch was indestructible even _before_ she mutated, okay? She'll be fine."

He gently tugs Leo upright and resumes scrubbing. "When we're done, he says, I'm going to take you back downstairs so we can yell at you some more and you can tell Mikey it's not his fault you left. Capische?"

"Capische," Leo replies, staring into the bathroom mirror. The turtle looking back is battered, bloodied, tired and scared...but there's no monster over his shoulder, only a worried-looking brother.

And Leo supposes that's enough for now.

After Donnie fixes her up, they install Karai on the couch under a soft blanket. Her skin has shifted back to scaly white, her eyes are green again, and a tail pokes out from under the far end of the blanket, but otherwise she's still recognizably human. "You look great," Leo tells her, and means it.

He sits crosslegged on the floor besides her, holding her hand as they watch _Space Heroes_ together. At one point, he works up the courage to say, "I...I think I'm going to stay. It might be hard, but I'm going to stay." He squeezes his hand, not daring to look at her. "Will you?"

She plants a soft kiss on the top of his head, her forked tongue flickering gently against his skin. "Always." Her voice is more guttural than it was before her transformation, but it comes without effort, and Leo knows he can believe her.


	23. Family Bonding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raph and Karai have a bit of fun with the turtle they've just captured.
> 
> Very ugly story, based on the premise that Raph couldn't be freed from Shredder's control right away and later Karai joined him.

Raph and Karai ambushed the turtles outside of a bakery, where Raph had a hunch they'd be getting food. Neither of them were able to think too hard about how he knew this, and for her part Karai was distracted with her surprise that that hair-trigger dipshit was right about _anything_.

"You owe me five bucks!" Raph screamed, twirling the little orange one's nunchucks around his claws as the tall purple one swung a bo staff at his head. At least that was what Karai thought he said; it was a little hard to hear him by all the turtles yelling weird things about family that her brain couldn't process.

"Yeah, yeah," she muttered as she swung and parried at the one in blue--the leader, she thought. Leonardo the leader, it was easy to remember from the files her father had given them.

Leonardo the leader was putting up a pretty decent fight, chanting nonstop to heal the poison from Karai's venom. His hands were glowing blue like a confused Christmas tree, despite Karai's best efforts to cut them off.

"Do you know why you're doing this?" he asked, eyes wild with pain even though Karai hadn't even cut him yet. "Do you remember who we _are?"_

"Dead meat!" Raph yowled, before giving the orange one a good _thwack_ on the head ("Why didn't you cut his throat?" Karai asked him later, and was rewarded with a blank stare). Orange's eyes rolled up in his head and the purple one scooped him up. "Retreat!" Leo yelled, and the thought that he sounded a lot like Raph formed in Karai's brain before being abruptly wiped away.

The turtles took off, masks flickering in the wind like signal fires. They were fast, but Karai's feet turned into a tail as she ran, and it pumped her ahead at blinding speeds. She closed in on the weighed-down, skinny one, reaching out to grab those temptingly long mask tails.

"Go!" Leonardo cried, and Karai didn't have to time to consider what that meant before someone was tackling her, knocking her into Raph. She scrambled upright to see Leonardo roll to his feet as his younger brothers disappeared over the building's edge.

_Oh, you've got to be shitting me._

Leonardo drew his swords, swinging one at Raph when he tried to follow while the other pointed at Karai. "Don't come any closer," he warned, voice shaking slightly.

Raph squinted. "Are you...are you _high_ or just brain damaged?"

"Your name is Raphael. Your favorite bands are Melanie Martinez and Fall Out Boy. You claim to hate _Space Heroes_ , but watch it with me anyway. You love animals and had a tortoise named Spike before he--"

Karai never got to hear the end of that bizarre spiel because Raph had charged with an earthshaking roar, and she was compelled to follow suit.

The turtle fought well, but as strong as he was Raph was stronger, and as fast as he was Karai was faster. Still, Karai was bleeding from a cut on her forehead and more on her arms before they finally knocked him out. Raph had gotten about the same, which was maybe why he kept hitting Leonardo long after his eyes had flickered shut.

"Hey!" Karai yelled, smacking him in the neck and sending Leonardo tumbling out of his grip. "He's no good to us dead."

Raph cocked his head and stared at her, white eyes flickering in the weird way they got sometimes. "Right. Yeah."

"Freak," she muttered, and was surprisingly gratified to see his gaze narrow back to clarity. "Bitch," he shot back, bending down to shackle Leonardo's hands behind his back and strip him of his gear.

"Cunt. Now, pick him up and let's go."

"The fuck do I have to do it for?" Raph grumbled, slinging Leonardo over his shoulder.

"Because you're the big strong manly man and we need a reason to keep you around," Karai said, her tail shifting back to feet.

Raph stuck his index finger up in the air, the closest he could come to flipping the bird (Karai had already mocked him in depth for this deficiency), and they set off for Foot headquarters.

Or at least that's what Karai thought they were doing, until Raph kicked his way into an old Foot warehouse instead. "Your dad's gonna spend twenty minutes monologuing before they bring him home," he said to Karai's raised eyebrow. "I'm not waiting around for that shit; be quicker to interrogate him ourselves. Besides, they know where we live--assholes would probably launch some rescue attempt before we cracked him."

Karai hated to agree with Raph, but for once, his reasoning made sense. And...and there was a part of her that didn't want to take the blue turtle home to her father. Not yet, anyway.

She couldn't quite put her finger on why, only that she didn't want to do it.

So she followed Raph into the warehouse, where he tossed Leonardo onto the floor and went to find nail pliers. Karai grabbed the turtle's limp legs and shackled them to bolts in the floor--she didn't want the fucker to kick her again. The bolts were farther apart than they should have been, leaving him spread to the point where it might be painful.

The turtle looked...interesting, like that. Vulnerable in a way that was both oddly familiar and intriguingly new.

He was kind of cute, she supposed, with those ridiculously big blue eyes. Softer at the edges than Raph was, delicate where he was bulky. She twirled his limp fingers through her hands and had the feeling she'd done this before. She had that feeling a lot, though, so she ignored it.

Raph couldn't find nail pliers, but he could find a first-aid kit. "Fix me up, nurse," he said, pitching it at Karai's head.

She snatched it out of the air with one hand. "Fix yourself, dickhead." She set about stitching her cuts, hissing in pain and shooting the unconscious Leonardo dirty looks. "Or better yet, just rot."

"Whatever." Raph stomped over and kicked Leonardo in the stomach, knocking him over on his shell.

Karai cocked her head at the sight. "What's that?"

"Huh?"

"That." She pointed to the space between Leonardo's legs, where something looked almost...folded.

"That?" Raph blinked. "Think it's his tail." He dropped to his knees and reached out, rubbing his fingers along the strange thing. "Yeah, pretty sure it's his tail. I've got one, too."

"So you, like, keep it over your asshole all the time?"

"You're one to talk, Miss Elastic Pussy."

"Eat shit," she hissed.

Raph ignored her, still keeping his hand on Leonardo's tail. "Think he'd wake up if we ripped it off?"

"He's already awake. His heartbeat just changed."

Raph rolled his eyes. "That's bullshit."

"Snakes have really good hearing, you know."

"Meaning you can hear a knife drop in the dojo, not that you're fucking Dare--"

Leonardo picked that moment to sit up and give Raph a vicious headbutt, sending him tumbling.

"Told ya," Karai said, smiling with too many teeth.

"Fuck ya, you still owe me five bucks! And fuck you too!" Raph sat back upright and slapped Leonardo across the face, opening a spurt of blood in his lip.

"I've given you worse," the blue turtle said, blinking at them. He glanced around the room. "You didn't want to take me back to Foot headquarters, did you? Why?"

"Because we absolutely love it when suicidal assholes try to play psychoanalyst with us," Karai replied. "It's right up there with family picnics and getting shots."

She plucked a knife out of her belt and held it in the air, trying to assume a threatening expression that wouldn't make her face sting. "Now, where are the rest of you little shits hiding?"

Leonardo frowned. "Raph doesn't remember?" He shot an anxious glance at Raph, which wouldn't have been so weird if he hadn't seemed worried for _Raph_ instead of himself. "Did he...hurt you for that?"

"The fuck do you care?" Karai asked. Of course her father hurt them. He hurt them when he screwed up and he hurt them when he felt like it and he hurt them because he could. That was just how things _worked._ Did this idiot really not understand that?

"You're my brother and sister. Of course I care." _This again._ Karai put her head in her hands with a groan.

"You're not going to get out of this by playing the 'secret relative' card," Raph growled. "This isn't a fucking soap opera."

"Then how come we look so ali--"

There was a green blur, and suddenly Raph was choking Leonardo's words away. "Shut. The. Fuck. Up," he whispered, grip tightening with every word as the other turtle twisted and bucked.

"Raph..." But he was already staggering backward, leaving Leonardo to suck in desperate breaths on the floor.

Karai grabbed him by the chin, fingers digging into his flesh with just a hint of teeth. "If you talk, we'll kill you quickly. If you're going to be a bitch about it, we can make you wish that fuckhead strangled you."

"You...won't..." he gasped out.

"Won't hurt you? From where I'm sitting we've already kicked your ass pretty thoroughly."

"No," Leonardo shook his head firmly. "You can...hurt us.....yeah, but there....are limits, to what....the brain worm can....make you do."

His eyes shifted to Raph. "You didn't kill Mikey when you had the chance," he said. "I don't know how much you remember, but there's something of you left in there, both of you. And Donnie's almost finished making the cure--"

NO CURES. The voice was a roar in her head, and Karai shoved her blade against the turtle's mouth, pressing it closed. "Do you think you could regrow your those big blue eyes if we cut them out?" she asked, her voice and deadly. "Do you think you could fix that pretty little tail if Raph snapped it in half?" His heartbeat didn't even jumped at the words, and Karai frowned.

"The only reason we didn't start slicing you before you woke is that we want to see the fear in your eyes," Raph said, kneeling behind the turtle and winding his finger through the mask tails so he couldn't pull away, uniting with Karai the way they always did in the face of a common enemy.

Karai traced her blade up his face, along his cheek. "You're not cutting," the turtle pointed out, his heartbeat still ridiculously low.

"Shut up," she muttered. But it was true. She didn't _want_ to cut him, for some reason, but she ~~needed to~~ wanted to hurt him, to scare him. She and Raph _had_ to make the turtles suffer for everything they'd done. It was what their lives had been about, for so long.

He didn't seem to fear her knife, though, even when it pressed ever so lightly against the skin. And he didn't seem to fear Raph's fists, even though they were clutching at his arms with bruising force. But...Karai cocked her head, an idea flickering into her mind.

There are lots of ways of ways to make someone suffer, after all.

She put the knife away. "The fuck are you doing?" Raph muttered, shooting her a glance from behind Leonardo's head. They really dod look freakishly alike at that angle.

"Shut up. I want to try something," she said, shifting her position. Leonardo was tugged slightly off the ground from the way Raph was holding him, so it was easy for her to slip her hand between his legs and wrap her fingers oh so gently around his tail.

The effect was immediate. His breath hitched, chains rattling as his legs flexed in their restraints, and Karai smiled at the sound of his spiking heartbeat.

"That scare you?" she asked, running her fingers up and down his tail, digging and pushing to reach the very soft skin behind it.

"Karai," he hissed, sucking in a breath. "Karai, stop..."

"Tell me where you live and I will," she said sweetly.

"The fuck are you doing?" Raph asked.

In answer, she took his hand and placed it between Leonardo's legs, wrapping his fingers around the tail. "Oh, wow..." he breathed, his scent shifting to something that Karai had never encountered before. She kind of liked it.

Her own fingers drifted along, exploring, and it wasn't long before they brushed against a tight little slit. "Is that where you keep it?" she asked.

Leonardo whimpered, twisting his head away as his cheeks flushed red and his smell started to shift the way Raph's had, the way Karai's own was starting to change. "Sto--aaah!" His words were cut off in a cry as Raph tugged his tail viciously.

"You like that?" Raph whispered, as Karai's fingers started shifting into a snake head. "You like it rough, dont'cha?" Her hand-tongue flickered into the slit, exploring the warm darkness, and she was rewarded with an odd purring sound. The base of Leonardo's plastron started to bulge, and Karai felt a hardness under her hand-tongue.

"Come out," she crooned, digging and licking. Leonardo shook his head wildly, red face contorted with pain and concentration.

"So high and mighty," Raph whispered. Karai's free hand shifted into a snake and ran its tongue back along Leonardo's tail, which Raph had started to slowly force away. "So fuckin' righteous." Karai joined in, and together they forced the tail back, exposing him completely. "Bet you're just a little whore underneath it all."

Karai shoved her tongue into Leonardo's entrance, rubbing her salvia along his walls. He let a cry, twisting up as he could somehow escape. Raph grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him back down, planting sloppy kisses along his neck.

"Get _out,"_ he breathed. "Not like this, Karai, _please...."_

She ignored him, could barely hear him over her own panting breaths and the buzzing in her hands. Both of her tongues reached ever higher, shifting and twisting as she set about stretching him. "Don't be scared, pet," she murmured. "It's just a game."

 _Just a game, Karai. Just a game, Raphael._ Her father played games with them all the time, in and out of his bed, and it didn't matter if they didn't want to play. Why should it be any different for this little turtle?

When Leonardo's cock spilled free, he let out a moan that was half pleasure and half grief. Karai ran her hand-tongue down his length, tasting it carefully. It tasted sweet, she thought. Sweet like his deep blue gaze and his total faith in them and the sounds he made as she pushed her hand-tongue up his asshole alongside the second one, to stretch him ever farther.

A bit of blood stained both tongues, but Karai forgot it almost instantly when one brushed against a little bundle of nerves. Leonardo cried out, head snapping back and forth in Raph's grip.

"If you do this, you'll never forgive your--" His words were cut off when Raph pulled him into a kiss, his free hand reaching to tap Leonardo's cock playfully. His own cock was out now, vibrating between his legs.

"Hush," Karai said, as Raph wrapped his hand around Leonardo's cock. "Pets don't talk." Leonardo spasmed and came almost immediately, eyes rolling wildly in his head, but Raph was already patiently rubbing him back to life, his hands quick and skilled from his tutelage by the Shredder.

Karai closed her eyes in concentration and her skin rippled purple-white before her clothes melted away, leaving her naked. "Do you like this?" she asked, rubbing her breasts against Leonardo's plastron. His cock jumped almost immediately at the touch, and Raph lifted a hand to squeeze one breast. Karai would have shoved him away on almost any other occasion, but she was feeling generous.

"Daddy always says I have the prettiest tits," she murmured, pulling her tongues out of Leonardo with a wet _squelch_ , to be immediately replaced by Raph's digging finger, wet with Leonardo's cum. "He always says Raphie has the bestest hands." She ran one tongue along Raph's cock and another along Leonardo's, smirking as they both twitched. "Don't you agree?"

Leonardo's eyes shifted, going sharp with horror. "He's been raping you?" he gasped.

Karai slapped him across the face, the _crack_ echoing through the dim room as Raph jabbed his fingers painfully deep. "Not rape," she hissed. The word was forbidden, like 'cure' or 'brain worm.' "Pleasure, like what you're getting. You should be _thankful."_ She squeezed his swelling cock and rubbed it against her own belly. "You should be _begging."_

"Oh, he's begging all right," Raph murmured, hoisting Leonardo into his lap. "Sucking me in like a little slut, aren't ya, Fearless?"

Leonardo's head jerked up at the name. "Raphie," he whispered. "Raphie, you remember me, please don't--"

"Shhhh..." Raph's voice echoed in her head as Karai shoved her tongue down Leonardo's throat. He thrashed, letting out a muffled cry, teeth scraping uselessly against her inhuman flesh. She heard Raph purr as he slowly thrust instead the other turtle.

Karai shifted her legs into snakes--she could do this, she just rarely felt the urge--and wrapped them around both their heaving, panting bodies, pulling herself snug against Leonardo's chest. "Come now, baby," she murmured, guiding him inside. "Be good for Mama and Papa."

She'd never talked like this before, never done this to someone who wasn't willing before. There was a mechanical whine in her head and the room was full of sickly sweet scents and if she could think clearly she might have stopped this, but the feeling of Leonardo inside her was so glorious that everything else was wiped out by one bright blinding shriek. She sunk her teeth into her neck, and barely kept herself from using her fangs in time.

They shifted back and forth like the world's weirdest rocking horse, Karai riding in one direction while Raph pumped in direction. Leonardo was crying now, tears streaming down his scarlet face, and Karai lapped them away. Then she's kissing Raph, breathing in his familiar scent and the surprisingly sweet taste of his lips.

Her hand-tongues were everywhere now. Touching Raph, touching Leo, touching herself. The room echoed with the sound of flesh slapping flesh, with three different voices panting and moaning, mixed in with the broken sobs of one.

"Don't cry," she murmured, lapping at Leonardo's earslit. She genuinely didn't remember why he was crying; who could cry when everything felt so wonderful? "You're so pretty," she told him.

"So good like this, pet," Raph chimed in, sinking his teeth into Leonardo's already bruised neck.

She couldn't remember how long they kept at it. They were all mutants, which gave them a hell of a lot more stamina than Shredder. It could have been ten minutes or an hour before Leonardo finally came, dragging Raph over the edge with his wild spasms.

Karai rode their vibrations of their combined orgasms for as long as she could before she climaxed herself, letting out a piercing shriek-hiss. She slumped in Leonardo's lap, feeling a little disappointed when he didn't reach to catch her.

She slithered off of him, exhausted and sated. "Was that good for you, sweethearts?" she murmured, tracing a hand along Leo's thigh. He didn't respond, eyes blank and hazed with what she told herself was just pleasure.

Raph dragged himself out of Leonardo and lay him gently on the ground, running a soft hand over his shell. "Wow," he murmured, curling up besides him, their bodies fitting together as if they'd done that a thousand times before.

Karai flopped down besides them and for a while they just lay there, feeling more at peace than she had for a long time. "Do you think Shredder will let us keep him when we take him home?" she asked eventually.

"Hope so," Raph murmured. "We could keep 'im on a leash, borrow some of Shredhead's fancy stuff." He patted Leonardo's ass fondly. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, pet?"

They were still waiting for Leonardo to respond when something crashed through the window, filling the room with a foul-smelling smoke. Karai sat up, taking a breath before she realized what it was and falling back with a dull _thump._

The other two turtles crashed through the window, accompanied by a redhead girl, all three of them wearing gas masks. Raph lunged at them, but his movements were too slow and the orange one whacked him over the head with a chuck, sending him crashing to the floor.

The redhead girl leaned over them, her eyes glowing. She clapped a hand over her mouth at the sight of Leonardo. There was shouting, muffled behind the masks, and Karai knew no more.

Karai is strapped to a table. There are wires on her head and bruises in the crease of her elbow from all the blood the purple turtle's been taking. A needle in her vein pumps her full of something that keeps her thoughts sticky and slow. She thinks Raph's lying on a table of his own, but she can't see very well.

Right now the redhead girl is here, talking to the purple turtle. The purple turtle looks like he's been crying, which Karai thinks has been happening a lot lately.

"I should have found him sooner," the redhead whispers. "Donnie, I'm so sorry..."

"If you found him earlier, we would have walked in on something unforgivable instead of the aftermath," the purple turtle replies, his voice a dull monotone as he stares into a beaker.

"Is Leo....can he talk again?"

"Here and there. Sensei cleared him for training, thought it would help, but he had another flashback." The purple turtle--Donnie--rubs his head with a groan. "He says that Shredder...did to them what they did to him, just in case this couldn't get any more fucked up."

The redhead glances over at her, an unreadable look on her face. "Will they remember, when you take out the worms?"

Donnie shrugs. "No idea." He looks up at the redhead. "Could you and Rockwell try to take Leo's memories away?"

"We could try, but..." she sighs. "It might just make things worse. I...being near any of them, it's like looking at shattered glass."

"I know the feeling," the turtle mutters. He picks up a needle and stares at it.

"Donnie..."

"What?"

"Killing them won't make things any better."

"And what are we supposed to do, then? Raph's probably gonna be on suicide watch for the rest of his life after this, if he remembers. And Leo...you expect him to eat with them, train with them, _live_ with them?"

He glances over at Karai, a storm in his blood red eyes. "Leo says there was still something of them in there," he says quietly. "He said that like the possibility shouldn't scare the shit out of all of us."

"They're not going to do it again," the redhead says firmly. "That's not who they _are_ , Donnie."

"Not who they were, but...who are they becoming?" Donnie tosses the needle away with a groan. "For that matter, who is Leo becoming?"

The world shivers and warps, and then Leonardo--Leo--is standing over her. His bruises are faded and he looks thinner than she remembers, more tired.

"I forgive you," he says quietly. "Both of you. I...I know it wasn't you. You'd never do that, not if you were awake. You were just trying to resist the programming. You _had_ to hurt me, and you did it in a way you didn't think was so bad."

He hugs himself, shivering, even though the room feels warm. "I'm going to come here, every day, until I don't remember when I look," he says quietly. "So when you get better, I won't be scared of you."

Leo lets out a soft, sad chuckle. "I think a part of me still loves you, did you know that? Both of you. Isn't that stupid? Isn't that crazy?"

He leans forward and plants a kiss on her mouth, his lips soft and sweet. "I feel crazy, sometimes," he confesses. "When Donnie fixes you, you'll probably feel crazy, too. Maybe we can be crazy together. Or not."

Leo turns away and out of the corner of her eye Karai thinks she can see him kissing Raph. "It was like a dream," he whispers, voice rustling in her ears. "A fantasy and a nightmare wrapped into one, and I'm not always sure I woke up."

He turns away, and Karai and Raph are left in the white shining silence.


	24. Lifeline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leo wakes up in a lab far outside the city limits. Luckily, he's not alone--sort of.

Karai appears after Leonardo's first botched escape attempt, the first time they give him electroshock. He's tossed onto the floor of his padded cell and curls in on himself, groaning.

"Just be glad you didn't piss yourself. Mutant biology saves the day again."

Karai's leaning against the wall, smirking at him. She's wearing a black hoodie and jeans, the clothes she was wearing the last time he saw her. Her hair brushes her shoulders; she's been growing it out since the death of her two fathers.

"You're not real," Leo points out, rubbing the blood off his lip. He looks at her clothes with jealousy; they learned their lesson from his hidden blades and stripped him of everything, even his mask.

"Maybe not, but at least I fit the decor," she says, flopping down besides him. "Rubber walls? Seriously? They got a bunch of crazy ghosts running around, too?"

"Do you count?" Leo asks. She slugs him, and it's one of the few things in this place that doesn't hurt.

Wherever he is is in the middle of a forest; a forest that's a far cry from the dark wild depths surrounding the farmhouse. This is a neat little forest, stripped of life and carefully planned out. It's sole purpose is to hide things the government doesn't want you to see, like this building. Like Leo.

He was targeted specifically and brought here so that doctors could take samples of his everything and hurt him in a hundred different ways, all to test the limits of his "healing factor." He tries to explain to them that the "healing factor" is actually years of very specific training and developing his meditative skills, because life does not actually resemble comic books and he's not fucking Wolverine. The doctors ignore him.

"Dipshits," Karai says, as Leo rubs at the bruises the restraints left on his skin, while trying not to irritate the freshly healed cuts scattered all over his body. "You should tell them that they can master the ancient art of Ninja Bending by drinking fresh dog piss and standing on one leg for an hour every morning."

"They won't believe me," Leo points out.

"They're a bunch of prep school morons raised on Jackie Chan and Kung Fu Panda," Karai says. "They'll believe anything."

So he tries it the next morning, and in return they give him radiation poisoning.

"Focus," Karai orders, kneeling in front of him as toxin flushes through the lead chamber. He's huddled in a puddle of his own bloody shit and vomit, but she doesn't seem to notice. Her gi is spotless as it glimmers in the low red light, the image of the warrior sensei. "Repeat after me." She starts going through the mantra, and Leo forces himself to follow, the words rasping out of his heaving throat.

He survives. They hose him down and strap him on a gurney, oohing and aahing like he's the greatest thing since the prefrontal lobotomy. "I think you have some fans," Karai says, back in her street clothes, swinging her legs off the edge of the gurney as they're rolled through the hall.

"Shut up," Leo mutters, staring at the ceiling.

"Oh, relax. It's not like a few maladjusted atoms are any scarier than my venom." Leo sticks out his tongue; a doctor blinks at him and makes a note.

He runs through katas in his cell when they're not doing test, defiantly ignoring the camera that tracks his every move. Karai spars with him, their firsts and feet blurring as they move back and forth across the cell. With that and the mats under his feet, he can almost pretend he's back in the dojo.

She's never there when he uses the bathroom, so he gets it over with as quickly as possible, desperate for her to come back. He understands that he's quickly becoming dangerously dependent on a hallucination, and he doesn't care.

"I don't like the term 'hallucination,'" Karai says, sitting across from him as he picks through a soggy plate of sad-looking leaves and grey mush. "I prefer 'dimensionally challenged individual.'" 

"Whatever," Leo replies, discreetly ripping off a little bit of the plate and folding it into a sharp white knife between his fingers.

"You know, most guys would be absolutely thrilled to share their captivity arc with a dimensionally challenged individual," she tells him. "Especially one with such incredible wit and glamour."

"Well, this isn't _Die Another Day,"_ Leo points out, shoveling more of the mush into his mouth with his bare hand, since he's not given utensils. He licks the stuff off his fingers, because he hasn't been fed in a long while and he doesn't know when he'll be fed again.

On his second escape attempt, he cuts two throats with the little white knife before someone nails him from behind with a tranquilizer. They beat the shit out of him for that, over and over again, letting him heal himself each time as he hangs in his restraints before doing it again. Karai tells him old Japanese fairy tales, her voice drowning out the slap of fists on flesh, or recites the mantra with him.

His left elbow doesn't feel right anymore, just like his right knee. They are some things mantras can't fix. "Just another battle scar," Karai says, laying her head on his shoulder. "Now, tell me which _Space Heroes_ episode is your favorite. Or give me the top ten, at least."

He does, lets himself sink into a sweet pool of geekdom, at least for now. The tears roll down his cheeks, but he keeps talking anyway, and Karai's prehensile tongue laps them away.

There are two agents in charge of his case, and there're both walking stereotypes. One's a nice-looking blond man in a nice-looking grey suit, a little scruffy around the edges, the kind of guy you'd want to have a beer with as he goes on about that criminal he just can't catch. His female counterpart is slim and polished, model-pretty, but undoubtably tough as nails.

They're the kind of duo who look like they exchange wisecracks and mild sexual tension as they explore the dark underbelly of society, chasing monsters. Leo understands very clearly that he is the monster in the story, the bad guy who's meant to be wrapped up by the end of the arc if not the episode.

"Really like this whole anti-pop culture thing you've got going on," Karai says, planting her hands on the agent's shoulders while swaying back and forth on the tips of her toes. Leo ignores her, flexing his wrists and ankles in his restraints.

"Who created you and the other freaks?" Agent Haveabeer asks.

"No one created me. I was an accident," Leo replies, careful not to acknowledge the possibility of others. He doesn't know how much they know about him, whether they saw him healing himself or someone else, whether they have anything more than just suspicions that he's not one of a kind.

"And growing up into a trained killer...that was an accident, too?" Agent Toughasnails asks, raising a perfect eyebrow.

"My father was a human sensei of the martial arts who was turned into a mutant. He took me in, trained me. He's dead now." The heart monitor doesn't detect a lie, or the gaping holes between the truths.

Splinter never taught Leo how to kill. Not until his death, which was the most brutally effective lesson of all.

"That's rather convenient," says Agent Haveabeer says.

Leo would shrug if he could. "I suppose." So much of his life is built on insane chance, but he doesn't see much point in torturing himself about it.

"All life is random," Karai says, snooty hipsters glasses winking in and out of existence on her face. She ruffles Agent Haveabeer's hair, muttering, "Toupee or not toupee?"

Agent Toughasnails switches tactics. "Let's talk about the other members of your cell."

Leo frowns. "What cell? There's only me."

Agent Haveabeer smacks him across the face, hard, at least by human standards. "Don't bullshit us," he growls. "We saw you healing that little freak in orange." _Mikey._ God, he hopes his little brother doesn't blame himself for this; it's not his fault he got shot. "We've got footage of the rest, too: the psycho in red, the dipshit with the bandanna, the Mr. Robot wannabe in purple, and that crazy psychic cunt."

"He's baiting you," Karai reminds him. _Obviously,_ Leo thinks.

He pulls his face into a mask of blank confusion, well honed from years of dodging his brothers' questions about where Santa's presents came from. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Listen." Agent Toughasnails leans forward slightly, an earnest expression on her face that she's probably spent hours practicing in the mirror. "We know you don't like the tests. If you just give us a little something--a few names, a meeting spot or two--we'll talk to the doctors about getting you a reprieve."

"And if I don't you'll waterboard me and send me to get toasted like a marshmallow again?" Leo asks. There are fresh burns dotted his arms and legs, small and painful--the mantra can help a little, but it can't make them disappear. Karai likes to plant soft kisses on each one, call them beautiful.

Agent Haveabeer sighs. "You have an incredible gift. If you're not willing to help your country, can you at least understand the value of sharing it with those who need it most?"

"It's not a _gift_ ," Leo says, letting a bit of anger creep into his voice. "I worked for a _lifetime_ to reach this level. Torturing me isn't going to speed up the process, and it won't make me play along with your inane questions."

As he speaks he dislocates both of his thumbs, ripping out his hands out of the restraints before the last word is out of his mouth. He unbuckles the strap and slips to the floor while their eyes--lulled into a false sense of security--are still shifting to his hands, undoing the cuffs around his ankles as he rolls across the floor.

Their hands fly to their guns, but Leo's already springs into the air, twisting midleap to wrap his arms around Haveabeer's throat and his legs around Toughasnail's. He snaps both their necks as he hits the ground, already jamming his thumbs back into place.

"Nice moves, Black Widow," Karai says, as Leo tears the holster from their waists and buckles them around his own body. A gun heavier than a space pistol, but he's seen enough movies to have a basic idea of how it works, and pointing and shooting is really just pointing and shooting.

He opens the door and darts out into the facility, Karai running at his side.

Leo kills five people and makes it three floors before they flood the hallway with gas and recapture him.

First they shock him, then they break his legs. They've figured out by now that he can't use the mantra if he's bound and gagged, hard as he tries, and leave him curled on the floor of the cell.

Karai stays with him, making obscene shadow puppets on the wall, the way she did all those years ago, back when they were frenemies on opposite sides of a silent war. She keeps him from drowning in the pain until they finally let him heal himself.

Sometimes there are more Havebeers and Toughasnails, growling questions at him from behind protective glass walls as he's shocked or beaten or, yes, waterboarded. The sensation of drowning is an old friend after the Technodrome, and sometimes he thinks he can hear Raph screaming his name as the water crashes down.

Most of the time, though, he's left with the scientists, who talk about him like he's not even there. Instead they discuss "the subject's" regeneration time, the way "the subject's" muscle's twitch under the weight of electricity or knives, "the subject's" habit of babbling to itself, how long it takes for "the subject" to scream himself into exhaustion, the various poisons "the subject" is able to survive.

In contrast, Karai talks to him nonstop. Rehashing stories from home, wondering about what ridiculous plan his family has scraped together to rescue him, going over his latest escape attempt with the joyful enthusiasm of a broadcaster doing a football replay.

Sometimes, he talks to her. Other times, he talks to them. "Do you get off on this?" he asks a man sliding mercury into his veins, wedding ring glittering as he works. "Do you go home and fuck your wife while thinking about what you did today?"

The man just rolls his eyes. "Can't we shut it up?" he asks one of his coworkers.

"Can't, sorry. It can't pull off the trick unless it can talk." says the other man, as Karai nibbles at his face with glittering fangs. "Just ignore it. It'll get tired eventually."

The scientists bring him animals of various shapes and sizes to heal, in various states of damage. Leo doesn't want to perform like a trained monkey, but he thinks of Raph's love for animals, Donnie's desire to heal, Splinter and Mikey's respect for the sanctity of life. Besides, it's nice to touch something warm and alive, something that doesn't want to hurt him and isn't a figment of his imagination.

"I christen thee Spike 2.0," Karai says, rapping on the shell of the little turtle crawling past him on the floor. "May you live a long and happy life, and you may not turn into a sexually confused rage monster whose physical form was plotted out by the god of metal on a bender."

"Slash isn't like that," Leo chides, even though he's probably thought that himself in the past.

"Not on a good day."

They dance in his cell, their movements ringing with the same grace and strength they bring to fighting. Music pumps from a phone that doesn't exist on Karai's belt, feeling the air with songs from several cultures.

They show off each other's sweetest moves, or they sway back and forth in each other's arms. Leo knows how ridiculous he looks, dancing with thin air, but he doesn't care.

Karai swings him low, until the back of his head is about to brush the floor. Her arms are snakes now, holding him tight and strong. Leo may be grounded, but when he's dancing with her he feels like he could fly again.

"Am I crazy?" he asks, doing a handstand. He can feel the lightest touch of Karai's feet against his as she stands on top of him, perched on one leg. The pose would be a lot harder if they were both physically present.

"We all go a little mad sometimes," she tells him.

"That wasn't an answer when Norman Bates used it, and it's not an answer now."

"Fuck, I don't know, Leo. My best guess is temporary insanity, a way of coping with the tremendous amount of shit you've been through both before and after you ended up here." She leaps off him in a elegant backflip, landing in a crouch so their eyes meet.

"But what the fuck do I know? Most of the stuff you learned about the line between insanity and sanity comes from Dr. Mindstrong on _Space Heroes_ when he's getting all psychological, and most of what I know comes from what Shini tells me when she's high."

He's in a tank now, sitting crosslegged as the water rises around him. "They're going to find out how long I can hold my breath," he tells Karai quietly. "And they won't let me out when I think I've had enough." The top of the tank is sealed; he's trapped like a bug in the jar.

She curls up against him, resting her head on his lap. She's in snake form, her coils rising around him in a thick, safe ring of purple and white. "I'm going to eat them when I come sssssave you," she tells him, not even joking. "I'll sssssuck up their entrailsssss like ssssspahgetti."

"Thank you," Leo replies, pulling her close and breathing in her familiar scent.

As the water rises he tries, and fails, to break out of the tank. Eventually he lets himself sink back to the bottom, curled up in a ball to preserve oxygen. Karai swims around and around over his head, the water rippling and dancing around them. She's singing a Japanese lullaby, her voice echoing impossibly and wonderfully through Leo's ears.

He doesn't know how long it takes before the pain becomes too much, before his lungs spasm and heave open against his will. The water rushes down his throat, but Karai's tongue is in his mouth, tasting so sweet as it curls around his his. It hurts so bad, but he takes comfort in the fake that he won't die alone.

In the dark he waits for Splinter to find him, but Shredder arrives first, mocking and laughing at him for coming to a such a pathetic end. Leo growls, summoning all the rage he's stocked up over a lifetime of grief and pain and humiliation and loss. His growl builds to a scream as the Shredder is engulfed in a tidal wave of hot blue fire, sending him tumbling into the nothingness.

He wakes up on the floor of the testing room as someone pulls defibrillators off his chest, spitting water and blood. Someone else announces that he was dead for one minute and ten seconds.

"Welcome back," Karai says, smiling down at him. "You look like shit." She plants a kiss on his forehead.

Leo takes deep breaths as they cuff his arms behind his back, whispering the mantra like a prayer as heals the cut in his throat.

"Why just you?" he asks, lying in her lap as she strokes his head. He's exhausted from a long day on the treadmill, and from healing the burns left by the cattle prods they used to keep him moving. "I mean, I'm not complaining....but why not Captain Ryan, or Splinter, or any of the others?"

"Captain Ryan and Splinter are fallen idols," she points out. "And the others....they're strong, but you could never bear the sight of them in this place." She smirks and her clothes change into a jumpsuit like April's, only this one is silver and not quite as carefully zipped up. "Besides, there's the ravishing sex appeal."

Leo rolls his eyes, but he doesn't pull away when she lifts him up and presses his face against her breasts, holding him close. "I love you," he murmurs.

She doesn't say it back; he'd never dream of putting such precious words in her mouth. Even the strongest fantasies--or insanities, whatever this is--have limits.

He doesn't beg until they cut off a finger. It's somewhere in the aftermath of his third or fourth escape attempt, when they've finally wised up enough to build a shock collar for him. Even with that, not to mention the restraints on the gurney, they still have hold him down when one of them takes out a set of pliers.

He has too few fingers as it is. If he loses one, will he still be able to wield his swords properly? He knows he won't be able to write his kanji, to honor his culture and his father's legacy. Years of hard work, of squeezing grace out of his clumsy massive fingers, down the drain.

Leo can't hold back a wail as they slice it off, staining white sheets crimson. It twitches as they carry it away, a mocking goodbye, and he throws up at the sight.

When he cries, they take samples of his fucking _tears_ , as if he's a phoenix or a unicorn or some other magical beast to harvest. As if even this small reminder of his humanity has to be categorized and locked away.

In his cell, he sobs out the mantra, the words coming choked up and too fast. Blood pumps from his stump, staining his plastron.

"Again," Karai says, standing over him, her face drawn and cold.

"Fuck you," he hisses.

"Maybe later. Now, do it again."

"EAT! SHIT!" he screams, voice ringing through the terrible space. "You don't know _anything!_ You're just the crazy bitch who's been stringing me along for years! You're not fucking _real,_ and you'd be fucking useless if you were!"

She grabs him by the chin, fingers tight. "Again, Hamato Leonardo." She's wearing her battle armor, the harsh light glinting on hard metal and harder eyes. "Again."

She recites the mantra, her voice stiff and tight as a drill sergeant, over and over again, until he finally joins just to shut her up.

After the stump heals, she tugs him to the feet and they start to spar. Her movements are measured and precise, every time or blow punctuated with another blow of the mantra.

"It's not going to heal," he pants. "I can't regenerate _fingers."_

"Only one way to find out for sure," she points out, flipping him onto the floor. "Now: “Rin. Pyo. Toh. Sha."

He can't think of anything else to do or say, so he finds himself joining in.

They do it over and over again, for days and days, and eventually he thinks he can see a little bump on his mutilated finger. A possibility of something more, perhaps.

He's wrapped in chains and a hood before being marched onto the roof and into a helicopter. He hunches in on himself, the noise of the rotors riding through his ears as Karai wonders aloud where they're going. "Barcelona? Australia? Kenya? I've always wanted to see Venice, and we don't have much time before it sinks."

They land on a rooftop and pull into the hushed halls of a building. Then the hood is yanked away and he's in someone's bedroom, an in-home hospital, looking down at an old white man lying on the bed in a tangle of wires and tubes. He looks familiar; Leo thinks he might have seen him on TV somewhere.

"This is it?" the man rasps, peering up at Leo like he's examining wares in the marketplace. "The magic creature?"

"Yes, sir," says one of the men who brought Leo here. Everything about his posture screams Leader, the same way Leo's used to--the way it still does, he hopes.

He turns to Leo. "This man is very sick," he says, as if speaking to a small child. "You're going to fix him."

Leo straightens his back and meets the other leader's gaze. "Let me go and I'll think about it," he says calmly. He suspected that this was what he was being taken for; he's had a whole ride to plan his response and push his fear away.

The man's glare sharpens. "That not how this works, kiddo." His hand shifts to the cattle prod at his waist.

"Leo," Karai says, perching on the end of the man's bed. "Don't be stupid."

 _You wouldn't say that if you were real,_ he reminds her sternly. For all that Karai plays the pragmatist, the manipulator, she has the same capacity for stubbornness and fury as him.

"Who is he?" Leo presses. "Why should I give a fuck whether he lives or dies?" He gets a cattle prod for the shoulder to that, staggering with a hiss of pain.

"You care, because otherwise we'll beat the everliving _fuck_ out of you and throw you back in the radiation chamber when he get home," the man hisses.

Leo glares back at him, eyes full of blue fire, but lets his shoulders slump in defeat. The men unclasp his cuffs, one keeping a tranquilizer trained on him as he slowly lowers his hands to the sick man's torso. Repulsion flickers across the human's face at his touch, and he seems to be making an effort not to pull away.

Leo smiles at him, warm and reassuring.

Then he reaches out and breaks the man's neck with a resounding _crack._ Shifted back into her more natural serpent form, Karai hisses in approval.

"Fixed it," Leo sees, grinning up at the soldiers broadly.

They hurt him for that. It's worth it.

They're riding a beanstalk up up up, as the vines rip the facility apart below, sending it crumbling in on itself while scientists flee screaming. A soft rainbow of flowers flare among the green leaves, the colors of everyone he loves shining in the low light.

"Jack and the Beanstalk was always my favorite story," Leo confesses. "The others like Beauty and the Beast, but I couldn't think of anything better than being able to touch the sky."

"Even with all the giants?" Karai asks, hair rippling in the wind and fluttering the edges of her hoodie.

"Even then." Leo stands up, relishes the sense of wind on his face for the first time in so long. He feels something tingling on his back, and isn't surprised to unfold soft blue wings.

Karai stands up, folding her own silvery white wings, and clasps his hand in hers. "Are you ready?" she asks. Their feathers touch, and Leo tingles at the sensation.

"Always." He knows this isn't real, and he doesn't care. They kiss, soft and gentle, before carefully pulling apart.

"Then come on." They step over the edge, and the stars swallow them up.

"Rin."

Blood in his throat, where they ripped a back tooth out.

"Pyo."

Blood on his fists, pounding uselessly against the unforgiving steel doors.

"Toh."

Blood running down his head as a woman staggers backward, clutching her broken nose. A compatriot raises a cattle prod, the tip flashing bright and hungry.

"Sha."

Blood drenching his leg, an entire stretch of skin flayed away. It takes him hours to regrow it.

"Kai."

Blood running down his wrist as he tears himself free, grabbing a scalpel. The collar responds very quickly, but not quickly enough to save any of the doctors of the room.

"Jin."

Blood flowing across his skin, turning red green, as he hunches under the weight of the freezing water.

"Restu."

Blood filling his throat as he keeps his limbs inside his shell, wishing his head could join, fighting the cattle prod for a just a few minutes longer. He's always forced out eventually, but he can make them work for it.

"Zai."

Blood dripping from his missing fingernails as the interrogator says he knows how to stop this.

"Zen."

Blood on Karai's face as she stands in the middle of a burning building, offering him someone's head as a trophy, the way he offered her her adopted father's once upon a time.

Whenever he says the mantra, her voice is always intertwined with his. He can't remember the last time he said it without her.

They shove him into a ring with other mutants, mad screaming creatures who don't respond to him when he talks. Most of them lurch or shiver when they walk, bearing none of the fluid grace of the mutants Leo's known. There is something very wrong with them, and he wonders if his brothers will think there is something very wrong with him when they find him again.

Leo takes them down quickly and efficiently, doing his best not to wreak permanent damage. Sometimes they punish him for being too brutal or not brutal enough.

"Do you think they're taking bets?" Karai asks, pointing to the camera with a middle finger. "Maybe if we're lucky the winners will take a ton of drugs and die."

"I don't get lucky," Leo reminds her, watching a spike-studded bird-man vomit in the corner before collapsing with a sigh.

"How long have I been here?" he asks. Karai's hair is hanging to the small of her back by now, but she's not exactly an accurate timepiece, and his have forgotten to give him a calendar.

She understands what he's really asking. "They're looking for you," she says firmly. " _We're_ looking for you. You just need to give us time."

"What if you're..." He can't look at her, can't say the words, can't express his millions of fears about what what happened to his siblings while he was gone.

"We're okay," she says firmly. "You'd _know_ if things were different, you wouldn't just fear it."

He flickers down, that dark thought temporarily flickering aside to be replaced by another, worse one.

She takes him by the chin before he can ever say it aloud. "We would _never_ leave you on purpose, Leo. No matter how annoying you get sometimes. We're your _family,_ Leonardo. Remember that. True family always comes for each other."

He leans into her touch and prays that she's right, that he hasn't been judged too damaged or bossy or incompetent to be bother rescuing. That he's still worthy. 

He's lying on a table, bound, beaten, spread by stirrups and shackles. There's blood in his mouth where he ripped someone's throat out with his teeth as they pinned him down.

And there is something.

Inside him.

It's metal and cold and it's moving and it's hurting him so bad and the doctors asked to see his penis and he did it just so they'd stop but they didn't and his tail is broken and cold hands are touching him in places he's never been touched before and they are _stabbing him inside_ because they want to see him heal internal injuries but it's really just to make him suffer and and and and

Karai is straddling him now, her hair brushing his face. "Once upon a time, there was a poor boy named Jack who lived with his mother and a cow. He was a dreamy child, always looking up to the stars when everyone else told him to keep his mind on the ground."

He's screaming too loud to hear her, but he hears her anyway, her voice splitting through his brain as she tells him that stupid story. He howls, spits, shout terrible curses, but her face doesn't change. Her coils are wrapped around him, soft white armor holding him together.

"Leo. You're losing blood."

"I _know_ , okay? That's the _point!"_

"This isn't going to be a painless death. It'll happen slowly, if it works it all, and then the corpse your brothers find will haunt their nightmares forever."

"FUCK YOU!"

"You need to heal your tail. Come on, I'll show you where to put your hands."

"It hurts..."

"It hurts because you're alive, Leonardo. The alien superchemicals couldn't kill you. The Shredder couldn't kill you, and he tried for _years_. The end of the _world_ couldn't kill you. You're a survivor, just like me. That's why I'm here with you. That's how you're still alive."

The pain is gone, except for what he feels in his memories and his soul, which is so much worse than anything his body could experience. His body is healed, his tail is fixed, albeit a little crooked...and everything still screams _filthy damaged dirty ruined dead pitiful weak lost._

"My father raped me," Karai says, sitting behind Leo's head. Her tail is wrapped around his wrists, keeping him from scratching at his tender injuries.

"I know." She told him a few nights after Splinter and Shredder's deaths, when he'd found her weeping in the Pit while everyone else was sleep.

"It doesn't go away," she tells him. "You can't kill the memories. There will always be times when you feel unclean, damaged." She weaves her fingers through the mask that has suddenly appeared on his head. "But you can still feel, still love, still remind yourself that what happened wasn't your fault."

She presses something into his hand; a paper clip that he snatched from a guard while they were wrestling him onto that table, only to drop it when he reentered the cell. "Don't worry about returning to what you used to be. Worry about embracing who you've become. That's what I do, every second of every day."

"And who am I?" he asks.

"You're a boy made of teeth and steel and hot blue fire," she tells him. "You're a vicious creature, just like me, which is why I came for you. You're the little peasant who killed the king and threw away his crown."

She helps him curl up in a ball, away from the camera's view, and watches him start picking away at the shock collar. "You're going to get out of here," she promises.

He is blank-eyed and obedient the next morning, shuffling meekly to the examination room and spreading his legs so the doctors can check for damage. He doesn't flinch as they poke and prod, examining the faint bruises that were a bloody ruin only yesterday.

"Do you think it enjoyed it?" one of them asks, and Leo doesn't scream a denial, doesn't do anything. Karai plunges an imaginary sword into the man's back and yanks it back out, swirling bloody roses on her cheeks.

It's only when they undo his restraints that he twists, wrapping his chains around one man's neck and shatter's another ribs with a kick, sending him crashing into a third as Leo simultaneously reaches up, performing the final jab from the paper clip that sends the collar clattering off his shoulders.

They should have moved him after every escape. They should never have given him an opportunity to memorize the halls, to plot the quickest routes of his escape. He tears through the building, leaving blood and gun smoke in his wake.

When he hears the hiss of gas he kicks his way into an office and tackles a man out the window, using him as a cushion as they tumble down the bricks, Karai whooping in his ear. The man's screams are cut off as he quite frantically explodes on impact with the ground, but Leo's already jumping off him. The wind ripples over his skin, wonderful and strangely warm.

There's a barbed wire fence in his way, so he grabs his stolen gun and shoots while running, hitting the post and sending it toppling down. He kicks his way through the wire, not caring as if slashes and tears at his skin. He's taken so much worse.

His leg is throbbing and there's blood streaming from his torso where someone shot him at some point, but he's already taking off for the woods, stolen gun snapping on his hip. This may be their forest, but Leonardo knows all about disappearing into environments where he doesn't belong. Being green helps too, of course.

He digs his hand into the wound as he runs, no time to care about infection, ripping out the bullet in a bloody spray. Then he's hissing the mantra through gritted teeth, Karai joining in as she slithers along besides him. The blood flow stops, but he's still dripping with what's left, so he has to crash through a brook and frantically wash himself clean.

The whole time, he can hear the roar of voices, pounding feet and the distinct hum of ATVs. They're drawing closer, closer...Leo flings himself into a tree and takes off, leaping from branch to branch like a crowning forest fire.

He's exhausted, and in pain, and light-headed from blood loss and the effort of all these mantras, but he keeps going. Karai hisses a warning whenever he's about to slip or fall, making sure that every leap lands true.

"Is this real?" he asks her as he runs, panting.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" And that's all the reply he needs.

Up ahead, he can see the trees start to give way, hear the hiss of cars on the road. Tranquilizer darts and bullets hiss around his head as he explodes into the sunlight, finding himself perched on a branch high above the highway.

In front of him and a little to the right is a billboard informing driver that they're entering Cook County, Illinois. Leo's jaw drops open.

He's in the fucking _Midwest._ No wonder they haven't found him yet.

"And no wonder this place is such a dump," Karai says. A bullet explodes into the air above their heads, a strange silver bird. "Now why don't you move your ass?"

Leo narrows his eyes, judging the distance and leaps, his feet lightly tapping the roof of a Subaru. He's leaping again before the people inside can scream or swerve, hopping from car to car like logs in a river.

His muscles shake with every jump, pain shooting through his injuries with every landing. Karai swoops through the air at his, flying on the wings that come with being a dimensionally challenged individual.

Still, he's moving fast, and for a stupid moment he thinks he might leaves their incredulous cries and roaring engines behind. Then a bullet hits a car just as he's landing on it and it jerks under his feet, hurtling off the road. Leo lets out a shriek as he goes airborne, twisting in midair in a frantic attempt to land safely. Karai cries with him, but she can't catch him.

He barely avoids being crushed by the sparking heap of metal, landing hard on his shell and flipping himself over the car to avoid a spray of bullets and darts. He's not hurt too badly, but the spill is enough for them to pin him down. Leo has no idea how many bullets are left in his gun, but he knows it's not enough.

"Fuck fuck fuck..." he hisses, yanking the limp body of the woman behind the wheel out of the car--no time to be gentle with the dead, not when he only has the smallest chance of salvaging this. He yanks her phone out of her bloodstained pocket and goes to emergency dial.

"Not me!" Karai hisses. Right. If he wants to give his family the best chance of tracking him, he needs to call someone else. He forces his shaking fingers to steady on the too-small screen, rapping out the familiar number. He can hear the shouts of soldiers trying to clear what is rapidly becoming a pileup, trying to reach him while still laying down enough cover fire to keep him trapped.

The phone rings. And rings. Come on, you _fucker..._ Donnie doesn't _get_ wrong numbers, he's got to know...

 _"Hello?"_ The sound of his brother's voice, sleepy and confused.

"Donnie, it's me." The words come out tangled in a sob.

 _"Leo?"_ The words come with a shocked gasp; he images Donnie lurching upright, instantly alert.

And Leo almost breaks completely, but Karai squeezes his hand and he remembers there's no time for that. "On the border of Cook County, Illinois," he says quickly. "There's a forest, next to a highway that's just had a really big pileup and--" Pounding feet coming closer and he has to hang up, don't know if they can trace the call from the other end. "I love you," he says.

 _"Leo_ , _wait--"_ Leo presses hang up and tosses the phone aside, throwing himself back over the edge of the car, straight into the fire.

They catch him, of course. They always do.

But he wreaks a hell of a lot of havoc before the tranquilizer finally takes him down.

They don't take him out of the chair after the shocks stop. They just leave him there in the dark, like a piece of broken equipment. Karai sits on his lap, chin resting on his shoulder, humming the _Space Heroes_ theme song into his ear.

He can't speak. There's a gag in his mouth and restraints in his mouth, taking his mantra away. At least they aren't punishing him in any other way--apparently, they don't see the need.

Two men come in to look at him and discuss the ups and downs of the three months _(three months three months three fucking months)_ of his time in their "care."

"The cells don't regenerate when they're separate from its body," one says, thrusting his hands in the pocket of his lab coat. "It has to be present, conscious, and unrestrained for the process to work."

"And while you were busy figuring this out, it was building a kill streak of _twenty-five_ people," says the other, a bearded man in a military uniform. Karai giggles at the number. "What have you been telling people? Sorry, ma'am, your son got crushed between the legs of a Wolverine-Hulk crossover. Here's some money. Don't tell the tabloids. And now _this._ It's on Youtube now, and after we had _finally_ convinced people the problem was confined to New York."

Leo smirks around the gag, wriggling his fingers and toes in what he hopes is a taunting manner.

"The fuck is it doing?"

"No idea. Thing's batshit insane. Spends half the security tapes talking to itself."

"Not very observant, are they?" Karai asks, flicking a shuriken at Uniform's chest. True to form, he doesn't notice when it buries itself in his heart.

Lab coat is holding up something now--a mask. Leo tenses at the sight, makes a wild effort to twist away as it's clasped over his face.

"Will it survive?" Uniform asks, not sounding very interested.

"If it does, then it'll be a vivisection instead of a dissection," Lab coat replies. "Bit of a hassle, really, but we can't risk taking it out of the chair."

 _No. No no no no,_ not when he's so _close..._ Lab Coat presses a button, and Leo bites back a scream as the smoke presses against his face, toxic and hungry.

They walk away, leaving him to his fate.

Leo holds his breath, but he can't stop the smoke from slithering up his nose, into his brain. It burns like _fuck,_ whatever it is, like acid behind his eyes.

He tries to hiss the mantra through the gag, but can't get the syllables to work. He repeats them in his head, over and over, but his head is full of flashing lights and screaming white sound. Everything is topsy-turvy, upside down. He just needs to _focus,_ and he can't, he fucking can't, can't do the one thing that defines him more than any other.

Rin." Karai is leaning over him now, staring into his eye, her gaze wild and desperate as the world swirls behind her.

"Pyo." _I can't,_ he sobs in his head. _I can't help you help me. I'm sorry._

"Toh." Her voice rings in his head, shaking with determination. The noise is painful to his throbbing skull, but he welcomes it anyway.

"Sha." She's so beautiful. So brave, so strong, so deadly. He loves her, truly loves her. He wishes he could have told her that before he was stolen.

"Kai." He knows she'll be a good leader, is no doubt being a good leader now. A better leader than him, maybe. His brothers will be just fine without him, as they've been so many times before.

"Jin." She is magnificent. She is flawed, just like him. She is alive and safe, far away from here, but tough enough to survive it anyway. He knows a place like this could never truly hurt her, which is why he felt okay seeing her here.

"Restu." There's something frantic at the way she clutches at him, as she's afraid of losing him forever should she let go. Part of him wants to clutch back; part of him wants to say it okay, he's happy leaving this damaged, violated body.

"Zai." Her hands are glowing a bright silver now, which is strange. Whenever the mantra works, the color is usually blue.

"Zen." He breathes, the poison rushing through his body.

He breathes.

And breathes.

He doesn't die. His throat is killing him, but it's still working.

Her fingers dig deep into his flesh, and they _hurt_.

Raph kicks down the door a few hours later.

Donnie races to his side and shuts the button, tears off the mask, sets about wrestling Leo out of the chair. His brothers' voices ring in his ear, a glorious tidal waves _Leo bro oh god oh man oh Darwin we missed you we love you we're so sorry we didn't get you before._ Their eyes swoop over him, cataloguing the scars no mantra could take away, the missing pieces in his gaze. He gives them a weak smile.

Raph carries him into the hall, where April stands on top of a growing heap of corpses, her tanto slashing and stabbing while her Tessen flies around the room, seemingly under its own power, carving men to pieces. He hears a distant whoop that sounds distinctively like Casey Jones, accompanied by a floor-shaking explosion. Shini swirls through rooms in a black spray, knives flashing as she winks in and out of formlessness.

They race through the halls, the gas systems sputtering uselessly under the weight of whatever Donnie did to them. Leo sees the people who've hurt him die in a dozen different ways as he peers over Raph's shoulder, and feels no sympathy. It was all scraped out of him long ago.

There's no sign of Karai, real or not real. He feels a flicker of panic, but then they're bursting out onto the rooftop and she's _there_ , a writhing mass of scales and flesh and steel, beautiful in her monstrousness. He knows she's real, because men die when she touches them. And they are a lot of dead men around as proof.

Then he's being bundled into a....ohmigod, it's a _helicopter,_ they stole a helicopter and found the time to paint it with a shell pattern on the way to rescue him. He lets out a burst of insane laughter.

"Isn't it cool, bro?" Mikey asks, pulling him close. Leo looks down at the burning building, at the mutants escaping into the woods, at the fire and blood that will turn into the ashes and bones of everyone who thought they could mess with the Hamato family, and agrees that yes, it is cool.

They're taking off, but Karai's still on the roof, still fighting as the flames and soldiers close in around her. Leo doesn't bother calling her name, since even with her keen nears she'd never hear at this distance and in this rocket. Instead, he tries something else: he closes his eyes and _thinks_ at her, the way he's done several times before. He's never expected a response in the past, though.

This time, she looks up at him and gives a toothy grin, a reassurance that's _everything's fine, just cleaning up._ Then she twists and bunches herself, hurtling into the air like a spring. She shifts as she flies, returning to the shape of a young woman as she lands lightly besides them.

She's clutching him, warm and strong and _real,_ so real. And the rest of his family is holding him, too, safe to see now that he's safe (except for Donnie, who's flying, and Casey, who's screaming "Good Morning Vietnam!" as he fires a machine gun that Leo will definitely confiscate in the future)

"I tried to find you," Karai whispers as they fly back home. "We all did, but...not even April could do it. I thought I reached you, but I wasn't sure."

"You did," Leo promises, winding his fingers through her hair. His stump has is about half the size of the old finger now, and still growing, bit by bit. He thinks his tooth might regenerating, too, although he's not sure.

He's still not sure how much was a psychic connection and how much was hallucination. He's got a long, hard recovery ahead of him, one that will never completely end--and Karai knows all too well about endless recovery. He looks at his family and wonders how much he suffered while he was gone, how much they'll suffer trying to help him now that he's back.

But Leo wasn't in the dark alone, and he's not alone now. He is a boy made of steel and teeth and hot fire, and he's in the arms of a girl who's the same.

"I love you," he whispers, soft against her neck.

And he knows it's real, because she says it back.


	25. Carve Your Heart Into Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karai considers the nature of her and Leonardo's scars.
> 
> Formerly "Written In Our Blood." Title from the song "Until It Hurts" by Francisca Hall.

Our bodies tell stories. They're maps showing who we are, what we've done. Karai has known this from the beginning, ever since her early days as a little girl with burns on her shoulder, marks from the fire that ate her mother's body. Hamato Yoshi gave her those burns, she is told, and one day she will do worse to him.

Her father adds new scars as time passes, cuts in training and welts from beats that never quite heal. A carefully organized diet and training regimen controls her growth, funneling her into the shape that the Shredder desires.

She gets her first battle scar at the age of eight, a tiny assassin carving through her father's finest adult soldiers. A man nicks her arm with a scythe, so she cuts his throat. Oroku blood is one of the most precious substances in the world, and one must earn the right to shed it.

(He is not her first kill. Her first kill was at seven, when she butchered a homeless man strapped to a chair and whimpering for mercy. Her father beat her for resisting, but the bruises faded. The only scars has for night is when she broke her mirror and pressed a thumb into the cracks, anything to drown out the noise in her head).

Another scar is a gift from Shini, from when they meet at ten. Karai's dangling a man off a rooftop when she's startled by the sight of a girl perched on a sign, providing running commentary. She cuts Karai's breastbone, and Karai slices her hand, watching in wonder as she bleeds ink.

"I can't quite control them yet," Shini admits later, as shadows twirl around her fingers. "I could teach you how to control yourself," Karai says. She is an Oroku, and she has control ground into her bones (she won't realize until later that it's not her control).

Her body starts to change as she grows, becoming a landscape to tend or pillage. A new teacher is added to her roster, a woman who teaches her about makeup and dresses and the proper way to hold yourself at a party, about men and women and the things they can do to each other. The woman has a soft voice and softer skin; she shows none of the brutality of her father or the other instructors, so Karai makes the mistake of thinking she's not dangerous.

She hears Miss Lotus talking to her father when she's thirteen, reporting on her progress. Karai doesn't know what is said, exactly, how much permission is given. Not that the Shredder has ever needed anyone's permission.

He comes to her that night and asks for a "demonstration" of what she's learned. She panics, she fights, she loses. She gets a new scar on her shoulder from when he slams against against the bed, slicing her skin on breaking wood.

A soft, small part of her dies that night, the part that might have once called itself Hamato Miwa. She looks into the mirror the next morning and a ghost looks back. She'll see the ghost sometimes, all these years later.

Karai doesn't tell Shini about that night, or all the nights that follow, because than Shini would try to kill her father, and she doesn't want her father hurt. She loves, him, she really does, and that's one of the worst things.

(When she meets April O'Neil, she hates her because for April, _kuniochi_ is really just another form of ninja. She's expected to fight, yes, but not to seduce. She's never had to spread her legs for her Master, or any other man her Master chooses. She will never have to bear Karai's burdens)

Her father has always wanted her hair long, but now he lectures her for not wearing in the exact style as Tang Shen's. Karai gets tired of the constant weight on her head and the hood she has to wear to keep people from pulling it, so when she's fifteen she sneaks out to get it cut in the most outlandish style she can think of.

She's left with a scar on her arm and the words _Your mother would disappointed_ ringing in her ears. She tells herself that her father just went overboard, that she doesn't have to be mad at him or herself.

She's mad at herself anyway, but she does not grow out the hair.

Time passes, and the scars build up. The Shredder chips away at her, forming her at a perfect stone statue, and Karai loves him for this, for making her _stronger._

When she's sixteen he summons her to America, to a city where all the food is too fatty and something is usually on fire and half of the populace are aliens or something. He tells her about a man she has to kill and the collection of monsters who fight for him. She's supposed to think of these monsters as just more people to manipulate, toy with, and eventually destroy as she has a dozen times before.

She tries her best, she really does. 

When she meets Hamato Leonardo, his ridiculously exposed body is almost baby-smooth, with only a few scars from sparring with his brothers. She can barely hide her scorn, bites back the question, _Hasn't your master ever bothered to discipline you?_

It's only later, when she finds herself monitoring him on the regular that she realizes there are other ways to be marked by one's childhood. She sits on ledges and watches as he rifles through dumpsters, examining each food item with a precise eye. He clutches them to his chest on instinct when she jumps down, and eventually she stops mocking him about it.

When she tries to tempt him with a crop top and a plate of sushi, his gaze locks on the food first, only shifting to her breasts as an afterthought. "We had good years and bad years down here," he tells her, much later. "The algae, the water levels, the rats and dogs...they were fickle. It's gotten better since we came up here."

Karai shrugs and mutters something a bit of sympathy. She thinks about how her father was telling her to watch her weight while Leo's was encouraging him to save the bigger portions for his little brothers. Now Karai has to shove away her father's and Miss Lotus's nagging voices while she sets out her portions, while Leo looks at his food like it might run away from him.

 _We're both a shrink's wet dream,_ she thinks.

But back to the past, to scars. She gives Leo quite a few in the days after their first meeting, and he gives her plenty in return, honing his skills with every midnight battle. A cut on his thigh, blood on her temple, a slice in his armpit, a wound in her ankle. Tit for tat, hurt for hurt. The others occasionally leave their marks (see O'Neil and the Inglorious Descent To The Subway), but Leo leaves the most, more than anyone except for her father.

He's everything the file says, she thinks: arrogant, naive, skilled to a point, monstrous, unnatural, _green._ There are plenty of things the file doesn't say, though. It doesn't say that Leo's eyes, and those of his brothers, are bright and colorful as jewels. It doesn't mention how they banter and battle in near-perfect unison, until she's making unironic comparisons to a barbershop quartet (thank you, American pop-culture crash course and the poor schmuck who put it together).

It doesn't mention the way he mothers them incessantly; Karai can barely keep from breaking into giggles when she spies on them from the shadows in a series of unsuccessful attempts to follow them home. It doesn't mention that he's the kind of person who'll lead you up a skyscraper, tell you "I just wanted to look at the stars" when you corner him at the top, and _fucking mean it._

He's fun to play with right until he plays _her,_ shooting her father with a missile and subsequently blowing their deal to pieces. Her father carves the Foot symbol into her hip for that, a tiny, brutal spot of red on her pale skin.

She chases Leo down afterwards and tries to do the same with him, knocking his swords away and drawing a knife. But she's only able to press a dot into his skin before he twists away from her, leaving a bright red streak on his arm. Well, she managed to mark him, at least.

"You're hurt," he says, eyes darting to the bandage on his waist. His eyes narrow, something dark flickering in their depths. "Your father, did he--"

"The fuck do you care?" she growls, swinging a blade at his head. He throw a smoke bomb and bolts, leaving her standing on the rooftop with watering eyes. Coward.

After that, she starts getting fewer scars from Leo, and more from her father, who's pissed at her for failing to stop this horde of puffed-up reptiles. So she's got that _and_ Leo constantly bugging her about the way her dad treats her, even after she locked him in a cage and sicced killer robots on him. All that "he's hurting you, Karai, he's not good for you" bullshit, like she's not constantly (sort of constantly) kicking his ass thanks to the way her father raised her.

Not to mention the fact that an increasingly bored and lonely Shini has started asking if she can come to America which is _not feasible_ , and all her father's visits to her room she can't think about...well, let's just say Karai's dealing with a bit even before Leo tried to drop one of the biggest pieces of bullshit she's ever heard on her.

She tries to cut out his tongue for that filthy lie, later. They both fall off a roof and she ends up limping home with a broken ankle, and a half-hearted hope that the scratch on his face might lead to permanent damage, or even a missing eye.

After a while of trying to pretend it hadn't happened, she confesses to her father what Leo said one night over dinner. He's horrified by the extent of Hamato Yoshi's deception, of course, but he immediately has a plan. Her big, strong daddy always has a plan, even if the plan leads them both straight to hell.

When she finds out who she really is, it cracks her world in two, and the scar left behind is bigger than anything on her physical body. For a little while, she drifts on the edge, tempted by the soft, glowing world of self-deception. She's become a master at it by now, and shouldn't you stick with what you're good at?

But the Shredder didn't raise a soft, glowing girl. He forged Karai out of scars, cutting and burning and pruning her in the hope of raising the perfect vine. Separating from him would be one of the worse, most terrifying pains she's ever felt, so of course there is no other option in the end. She's always been told that pain makes her stronger.

So begins the fall of the house of Oroku. And the very physical fall of Karai, down into a vat of mutagen.

From the outside, her body is perfectly smooth, stripped clean of all marks. From the inside, she feels like one big, throbbing scar, perfectly and utterly ruined.

What else is there, but to run and collect some new scars?

In the aftermath of her transformation, when she's cycling between forms like some dipshit flipping TV channels, she finds Leo on a rooftop. Her memories are an ugly storm and he's in the center, so she attacks.

No more games, no more flirting, no more plotting to find the lair she never wants to see again. She pins him to the concrete, kneeling between his legs with a snake wrapped gently around his throat, staring hard into his eyes. He looks back, and even though she can hear his heart throbbing painfully loud his gaze is steady and clear.

"Are you ssssscared of me?" she asks.

"No," he says simply.

"Liar."

"Karai...." he draws in a breath. "You've had so many chances to kill me, and you never took them." It's true. She's only given him scars, never anything worse. Never anything like what _she_ has.

"Look at me," she says, her skin rippling white and purple. "Look at what you did to me. Are you _happy,_ Hamato Leonardo?" She's being unfair, she knows she is, but the world is an unfair place and she wants to share her pain.

"I'm sorry," he breathes. "I'm so sorry, Karai, we can help you--"

"Prove it." Her hand slips between his legs.

He shifts to a reassuringly familiar deer-in-headlights expression. "What?"

"You want to help?" She laps at his earslit, breathing in his scent, trying to count the stars in his eyes. _"Prove it. Make_ me feel sssssomething, disssssstract me." Her scales are a white ocean and she's drowning in her own cold blood. "You know you want to."

He does. They fuck on the rooftop, grinding their scars together. No romantic fluff here; it's brutal and animalistic and confusing. He has no idea what he's doing, and Karai doesn't either, not really, not after a lifetime of screwing men and women for their pleasure instead of her own. She growls, low and loud, trying to drown out Miss Lotus' voice in her head.

They bite each other when they come, making a lot of semi-human noise in the process and probably scaring the shit out of the neighbors. Karai manages not to use her venom, but she does swallow a decent chunk of scales from his shoulder, hidden in the shadow of his shell.

They kiss, swallowing each other's blood as Leo's white eyes burn into her own.

"Remember," she hisses, poison dancing on her tongue. She digs her hand into the bloody wound as his shoulder and he doesn't flinch. "Remember me, little turtle. I have your sssscent, now."

Creepy? Yes. Overblown? Maybe. But fuck it, she's batshit insane at this point and so is Leo, if he's going anywhere near her.

She stands up and darts away, leaving him huddled in a pool of blood and other juices.

During the Kraang invasion, she tears at herself in a frenzy of hunger and self-loathing, crunching her own scales between her teeth. She turns herself into an Ourobos, something immortal in its strangeness and strange in its immortality, or whatever the fuck her thought process is.

Her body heals from everything, aided by the limitless nature of shapeshifting. She's left with scars all the same, faint and almost hidden unless you know what you're looking for.

Sometimes she goes out looking for food (bodies and fleeing rats, mostly, the dumpsters are empty). The Kraang burn her with their laser guns, leaving fresh marks on her skin. She feeds on them out of spite, even though she often gets sick afterwards.

When she sees Leo again, she's instantly aware of how many new scars he collected on his own. She glimpses a faint spiderweb of marks when his left kneepad shifts; she can hear the faint creak of certain bones at certain times, in ways bones shouldn't creak. If he's not careful, she'll catch a bit of the ghost in his eyes.

As always, his worst scars are on the inside, hidden by his skull the way hers are hidden by scales or armor.

He sprays the retromutagen and it goes about as well as can be expected, which is not at all. He wants her to come home anyway, with him and his brothers.

 _"Why?"_ she breathes in his ear, where the others can't hear. _"Sssssso I can fuck and eat them, too? Sssssstop kidding yourself, little turtle. I wassss a monssssster long before I lossssst my ssssskin."_

"I don't care," he whispers back, and he might mean it. That's how crazy he is.

She finds him again, after he's sneaking out alone. There's another fight, this time ending with him on top. She could overpower him if she wants, but she submits instead, curious.

Surprisingly, he doesn't fuck it up. Not surprisingly, they both end up using quite a bit of teeth again. He bites harder this time, swallowing a bit of her as she swallows him instead of just leaving a bruise. If she ever manages to get access to a computer again, Karai reminds herself to check whether this counts as vore.

Afterwards, they lie curled up together, Karai's body melting into a mostly human outline. She's still, too tired to flee or fight, and he takes that as invitation to conversations "What's this?" he asks, brushing a hand over her arm.

"I wouldn't ssssscrew a man for Ssssshredder, so he injected me with poissssson and waited a few minutessss before giving me the antidote. Leavesssss a mark." The confession comes out mechanically, without a need or want for pity. She points to his knee. "What happened there?"

His breath catches, but he quickly forces himself into the groove of things. "The day of the invasion, he....he ambushed me." He tells an ugly story about snow and blood and the bodies of dead ninja mixing with dead robots, of a man throwing a temper tantrum because his favorite doll had run away.

They go on like that for awhile, asking about each other's scars, even the ones whose origins they know because they created those scars. The past is easier to face when you shrink it down to a bit of rumpled flesh, a mark with just one little tale instead of a whole web of them.

"I can't go back," she admits to him, finally. "I can't be anyone's ssssservant, not again, even if Ssssssplinter _isssss_ better than Ssssshredder. I can't live with them--with you--and know I might lose my ssssshit again and do ssssssomething unforgivable."

"What if he finds you?" he asks quietly, "We've been doing research....Shredder might be making a mind control serum."

"I won't let them take me," she says, thinking about the knife in her pocket, the knife that is intended to end her own life if ending other's isn't enough. "Not ever."

"So you're just going to cut yourself off from your allies?" he asks, raising an eye ridge. Ah, clever boy. Not openly admitting he's worried about her safety for fear of scaring her away. "Not the best idea I've ever heard, Karai."

"You're sssssafer without me," she insists.

"If it's really safety you're worried about, you're not the biggest thing we've ever taken down, Karai. Or the meanest."

"Sssstill one of the most dangeroussss," she says. "Besides, you all love me. You because of the obviousssss, Sssssplinter because I'm hisssss daughter, and the resssst because they're following your and Ssssplinter's example. That'sssss what makessss me dangeroussss. And the Sssshredder lovessss me, too. He wassss going to kill you before, of courssssse, but he'd do it _sssslowly_ if he thought you were hiding me."

"But--" She leans over and plants another kiss on his bloody mouth. "It'sssss probably not rational," she admits, rising to her feet as she pulls on her scales like a coat. "But it'sssss what I need."

Then she's gone, like a streak of white lightning. She'd like to fall asleep besides him, but she doesn't trust him not to take her back to the others while she's vulnerable.

The next time she sees him, there are bandages on her wrists from where she tried to end herself before they took her, and a scar under her hair from where they injected the brain worm after she failed. There's a blue-eyed monster whose name she vaguely remembers from the files in front of her, blade glimmering in his hands.

"Remember me," he whispers as his blades strain against hers. "Remember my scent, remember, _please,_ Karai." His scent stirs up memories, yes, but she's not allowed to think about them so she shoves both them and him away with a growl.

They fight, giving each other scars to add on to the scars; their scars could fill a galaxy if they were stars. He defeats her poison; she stands over his unconscious body and looks at the marks in his skin with a narrowed eye. She suspects she knows what each one of them means, especially the jagged, tooth-like ones in the hollows of his shoulders, but she can't quite put a finger on it.

She'd like to touch him, but Daddy is the only one she's allowed to touch with softness, now. Daddy is _jealous_ after losing her, keeps her tucked all neat and snug in his bed. Daddy leaves bruises on her skin when he's mad, but no scars, not anymore. Daddy's not going to damage his perfect little Karai.

He makes her build a gauntlet, and that's what she does. She watches the little turtles wriggle and squirm in their traps, chewing on her nails without quite knowing why. She's never chewed on her nails before, never felt the urge until now. She can't explain why she's doing this, why she feels so _worried_ about these silly monsters.

She fights the rat, and she's _so close_ to winning, but her head is full of noise. She hears Miss Lotus telling her how to smile through the pain, she hears her father(?) telling her not to resist. She hears the rat saying things he can't possibly say, declarations of love and loyalty. She hears Leo....she hears him making the beautiful noises of an animal and the grim threats of a warrior and the desperate pleas of a young boy.

She hears herself, and her voice is a child's obedient murmur. It is a brat's defiant shout. It is an insane murmur twisting on itself, it's a sexual moan that could be real or fake. It is an untamed hiss.

Karai hesitates, just for a heartbeat. The rat hits her in the chest and fire burns through her, splitting all her scars open. She falls down into the dark, down down down.

She wakes up curled in the dark, bloody and bruised, with a fresh scar on the inside of her mouth where the worm scraped her coming up. The world burns red around her, and she thinks it a dream.

Later Leo finds her, picking his way through the shadows, and she realizes it wasn't. "The world ended," he said, sitting besides her as she runs her fingers over his body, marveling at the array of new scars. "We brought it back, I think."

He tells her a ridiculous store of space and time travel that she suspects is absolutely true, ending on the important note that the Shredder is crippled, although she knows he's not dead. She'd feel it if he was dead, like a great weight sliding off her back.

"I'm still crazy, I think," she murmurs. "Just so you know. Just 'cause Shredder jammed my proper s's back into me doesn't mean I'll ever be normal again. I still want to eat live rats and dance on his grave."

"I tried to kill myself in a space ship a few hours ago," he says. "So, not much better."

"We're all scars now," Karai murmurs, leaning into his touch. "Good things scars make armor."

A rat skitters by, and Leo's eyes follow it on instinct, only for him to frown. "What..." His breath catches at the sight of a bloody ruin of an egg smashed against the wall.

She lets out a low, humorless chuckle. "Don't worry, it's not yours. I examined it afterwards, just in case. I think it was already dead, anyway. Easiest abortion ever, right?"

"I'm sorry..." he whispers, pulling her close. "I'm so sorry."

"Prove it," she says, pulling him close. And he does. They prove themselves to one another, using their teeth to write promises of....something, maybe love, in each other's skin. Leo's scales taste of starlight, cold and bright in her throat.

"I'm going back to Japan," she tells him afterwards, winding his fingers in his mask. "I'm going to find Shini, and we'll build an army together or something. Then we'll come back and go to war." She glances up at him. "Will you fight with us?"

"Always," he says. He doesn't say it like a promise, he says it like a fact, like he's surprised she has to ask. Karai pulls him close and wonders if she loves him, and if he really loves her, if they've known each other long enough to be certain of such things.

Maybe if you eat a part of someone and they keep coming back, it might be love. A rather crazy form of love, but aren't they living in a rather crazy world?

She traces the scars on their skin and does her best to figure out what kind of future they're leading to.


	26. Going To Fall, Fall, Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit."

She fights--even after she's blinded, even after she's cuffed and hauled into the back of a van, Karai keeps kicking and screaming. There are arms around her, someone whispering nonsense in her ear that she can't hear over her screams. She tries to kick a window, but her feet are grabbed and shackled, and she thinks she can hear _that bastard_ asking if they pinch.

The blinding power wasn't as intense as her own, and her vision is staring to come back when she's tugged out of the van, hissing and spitting. She blinks frantically, trying to get the tears out of her eyes as shadows and lights sharpen into images.

"Hey, Princess," Raph says, looking her up and down with that insufferable smirk. "Bondage looks good on you."

"You _fucking--"_ She hop-charges him with an animalistic scream, jumping into a kick only for Leo to catch her in midair. "Easy," he says, twisting her to the ground and carefully pinning her. "Easy, it's okay."

"Okay?" Karai lets out a sound that's half sob, half hysterical laughter. " _Okay?!_ How fucking dumb do you think I am?"

She knows the answer to that, of course. Dumb enough to let her guard down, to lean into a kiss with her _sworn fucking enemy._ He'd closed his eyes and she'd felt so goddamn smug about making him nervous right before he'd sprayed her.

His betrayal _hurts_ , more than she'd ever admit to anyone. There's snot leaking from her nose, and not of all her tears are from the chemicals. But she keeps fighting anyway, because her father taught her never to yield, no matter what had been done to her.

"I'll kill you," she whispers as Leo tugs her back upright. "I'll rip out your throat with my teeth if that's what it takes, you two-faced _horror."_

"I'm sorry about that," Leo murmurs as he marches her towards into some kind of warehouse. "I really am. I...I do care for you, Karai. I-- _we're_ trying to help you." He looks so fucking sincere, the way he always does, especially when he's just fucked her over.

"By _kidnapping_ me? How the fuck does that help?" She doesn't expect an answer, not one that isn't bullshit or total _lunacy._ "I knew your master was sadistic, but I never thought he was _stupid._ He's just made it a thousand times earlier for me to skin him ali--"

They slip through the door and Karai's heart stops. Her mouth works like a beached fish's and she can hear Raph snickering, but she doesn't care because that is a bright glow of _mutagen_ searing her eyes. A whole fucking vat of it, with more still gurgling through a pipe in the wall.

"No." Her feet lock up, chains rattling as they skitter uselessly across the floor. "No no no _no_."

"It's all right," Leo says, voice low and soft like he's soothing a frightened child. "It'll be over soon, and we've got some pain pills for afterwards. We made sure to get only the best for you."

"Took a shit ton of work, too," Raph growls as he swaggers by.

"Please don't." She's begging and she doesn't care, because she can't--not _that,_ dear God. "Please..."

"Told ya she'd beg," Raph says, twirling his sai so that they flash viciously in the ugly green night. "Her Highness Cumdump, bitchin' n' moanin' like a pussy."

"Back off," Leo snaps, and Karai remembers all the times he'd tried to keep the peace between them in the past, when she was dumb enough to think of him as the _sane_ one.

"How's it going, Donnie?" Leo asks as they approach his brother, peering at a monitor hooked up to the front of the tank.

"Almost ready," Donnie murmurs, stroking his chin. "Hey, Karai," he says, not even bothering to look at her.

Karai can see a bored-looking April and Mikey playing cards nearby; their faces light up as she passes. Mikey waves, smiling with what looks like genuine excitement, and April blows a mocking kiss.

And if all these fuckers are here, that must mean....

"Miwa." Her blood runs cold as Leo gently turns her to face Splinter's, emerging from the shadows with a smile on his lips and something dark and hungry in his eyes. "Good evening, daughter."

"I'm not your daughter." She's lost count of the number of times she's had to say this, and each time is a razor under her skin, bringing up the same painful thought of her mother being stalked by this monster.

He ignores her. "This body of yours is far too fragile to properly defend yourself," he says, gesturing at the muscles she's built up over _years_ of hard work like they're _nothing._ "Tonight you will receive a new one, one to cement your bond with your _true_ family."

"And if it comes out as shit we can just dump you in retromutagen and use it again," Donnie says in a bored voice, poking at his screen.

"Unless it _really_ goes bad and we have to stick ya in a barrel like Timothy or somethin'," Raph chimes in. Karai barely manages to hold back a retch at that and April giggles, until a glare from Leo silences her abruptly.

"You'll be fine _,"_ he soothes, patting her shoulder. "In a little while you'll have a form that's worthy of you, and you'll be one of us."

Karai stares at them, not knowing if she should be laughing or trying to chew through the arteries in her own wrists. "You people," she announces, "are fucking batshit crazy _on top_ of being unholy freaks of nature, and I'd die before I join you." She spits in Splinter's face.

The kind mask crumbles, twisting with rage as his hand blurs--

"Sensei!" Leo steps between them, hands raised. "Please....Miwa's just confused. It's my fault for not preparing her properly. She'll apologize later, I'm sure."

And before Karai tell Leo to go fuck himself or at least move out of the way so she can give his master a decent headbutt, an alarm goes off on Donnie's screen. "Shredder's here," he says, sounding mildly interested by the news.

The others jumps to attention at that, weapons gleaming in hands as their crazy smiles melt into stone-cold glares. In the distance Karai can hear her father's battle cry as he tears through whatever defense systems they've set up. She just needs to hold out for a few more minutes, if she can talk to Leo maybe--

"Leonardo," Splinter barks, turning away, and Karai's hopes crumble to ash when he replies with an immediate, "Yes, Sensei." He tugs her over to a rickety metal staircase leading to a platform up above the mutagen, its outline glinting cold and harsh and looking far higher than it is.

"I'm not going up there," she spits.

Leo doesn't even bother to respond, just snatches her up in some twisted parody of a bridal carry before he ascends the stairs. She howls and twists, spitting vitriol, but his grip is like iron and his steps don't falter.

All too soon they're reaching the platform, even as the warehouse erupts into a storm of clashing blades below. Shredder screams her name, voice terrified in a way she never imagined possible. " _Father_!" she cries, twisting to see him, but Leo's setting her down and moving to block her view.

"Let me go," she begs, batting her eyes the way she's been trained and wishing to God her shaking voice was faked. "Let me go, please, I'll do _anything--"_

"What else could you do?" he asks, looking genuinely confused. "This is all we want from you, Karai: for you to be happy, for you to come home _."_

"I already have a home," she says, staring into his deep blue eyes, willing him to understand.

"Yes, you do," he says. "Now you just need to take the final step back to us."

Then he's leaning forward, his lips so soft and gentle and hesitant she almost doesn't notice the kiss until she's in the middle of it. It's exactly the way she imagined kissing Leo would be like, which makes the irony of everything else a thousand times more sickening.

"See you on the other side," he says, taking a step back. "Deep breath." Then he shoves her over the side.

She screams all the way down.

Karai sits up with a gasp, shaking as cold sweat pops out on her face. At least her head's still human this time, although her hands are snakes and her legs..."Fuck," she mutters, twitching the tail that's poking out from under her bedcovers like the Little Mermaid in reverse.

It takes ten minutes of meditation before she manages to return to something resembling a normal form. She shrugs on her armor and stalks out into the hall, knowing from experience that she won't be getting back to sleep tonight. Might as well get in some training, see if she can whip her arm-snakes into shape.

She has to grudgingly admit that the "gift" the Hamatos gave her has had its uses. But the aftermath...the months spent insane and cackle-hissing to herself, rolling in her own shit, feeding on the living and dead alike in the shadows of an alien invasion....oh, that was no gift at all. And she will have her vengeance, slow and bloody.

Karai has her sympathies for Leo, she supposes, so desperate in his desire to _help._ Cruelty that considers itself kindness is still cruelty, though, and even if his death might be quicker (or longer) than the others it will still be death.

Perhaps she'll give him a kiss in return, she thinks, smirking to herself. A poisonous one, so that her face can follow him into oblivion the way he did for her.

The smirk fades as she feels a fresh flare of pain in her temples; she's been having these blasted headaches on and off ever since she was reunited with her father. Side effect of all the extra shapeshifting, maybe? She'll have to bully Stockman for some medicine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the idea from IDW that brainwashing doesn't just control a person, but actively reshapes their memories.


	27. Unsettled Nighttime Creatures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from the song "Shadow Preachers" by Zella Day.
> 
> Very, very, very dark.

Leo shouldn't be out alone. He _knows_ that. But he can't bear the dreaming silence of the lair right now, not after he woke up from yet another nightmare of broken bones and dying brothers. Not when that feeling has come over him again of being trapped, closed in, watched from above, the feeling that's been haunting him ever since ~~the construction site~~ he got back from the farmhouse. Meditation was a bust, doing anything underground was a bust, and so he has to run.

He's not the fastest of his brothers (that honor belongs to Mikey, as so many things quietly do) but he's got the stamina and patience to beat them in most long-distance sprints. He's not in the mood for that tonight, though; tonight he wants to fly, bad leg be damned. He wants to run and run until all the ugly things are burned out of him.

At some point he grinds to a halt, hands on his knees, panting. He doesn't really know where he is and he doesn't really care. This whole city is home, after all. He's here, he's home, he's safe and sane and whole and--

Being watched.

He knows who it is, of course. Only three people could sneak up on him, but Splinter is safe at home (Leo checked, he always checks everyone several times before leaving) and Shredder likes to announce himself before he toys with you.

Karai steps out of the shadows, sword glimmering in one hand and sword in the other. "Out for a jog, little monster?" she says, a smile curling on her crimsons lips. "You should be careful. There are so many _nasty_ things out here." Then she blurs, tail snapping her forward like a whip, and Leo barely has time to draw his swords before the battle begins yet again.

Their blades flash and blur, so much more aggressive than the flirtatious repartee in the past. Leo's focus on is staying alive now, instead of trying to come up with a witty rejoinder. Still, if he tries to lose himself in the flow of things he can almost convince it's the closest thing they have to the good old days, at least until his bad leg throbs or Karai's blank green eyes flash in the moonlight.

He's got the mantra, but he's tired from the running, as she undoubtably knows. Not to mention all the muscles Karai's snake body built up during all her months in the city, the same months Leo primarily spent unconscious in a bathtub. But he's trying to get away, not win; all he needs is one opportunity to flee, one move wrong....

He doesn't get it. Her head shoots forward off her body, neck uncoiling--fuck, that's a new trick--and while he staggers backward she takes the opportunity to knock a sword away. He takes advantage of the freed hand to toss a smoke bomb, but she blurs right through the cloud while he's trying to flee and knocks him off balance, sending him staggering backward.

Leo manages to keep his feet for a few more minutes, but the mantra doesn't seem to faze Karai and her limbs snap and coil like whips, her aim growing more unerring with every blow. If she wasn't doing this to _him,_ he might find it beautiful.

(Oh, fuck it, he finds it beautiful anyway).

Her tail smacks into his chest and he's falling, already grabbing for a knife in his wrappings, but as his shell hits the roof a snake wraps around his wrists and yanks his arms painfully over his head, gripping his bruising force. The other snake grabs for his wrappings and yanks them off, sending the blades skittering away; she's been learning from his tricks.

The snake glides down his forehead, resting sharp-edged fangs ever so gently across his throat. He thinks about flipping her off, but then there's a heavy tangle of coils resting on his legs, pinning him.

Leo forces himself;f to look at Karai's smirk; he doesn't want to die staring at those terrible eyes.

But to his great surprise, he doesn't die at all.

Instead Karai just sits there, peering down at him with a kind of clinical curiosity. "You're scared," she says, cocking her head.

"Wouldn't you be?" Leo asks, trying his hardest to keep his voices steady.

She nods thoughtfully, as if he's just said something deeply profound. "You're good at this," she says suddenly. "Playing innocent, playing sweet...you're better at this than I ever was. They tried to teach me, but all I could ever manage was the kind of mean people want to impress. Useful, but yours is the better trick."

Leo frowns. "I--"

"Hush." A snake's tongue flickers up over his mouth, brushing his lips, and Leo's breath hitches. "No talking. You talked me into letting you blow my father up once, remember?" Leo winces at the memory.

Karai nods again. "Yeah, you remember. Maybe you even convinced yourself you were sorry, but you're not. That's okay. I wouldn't have been sorry in your place, either. 'Course, you wouldn't have forgiven me."

She shrugs. "It doesn't matter anymore. The point is, monsters shouldn't talk. Not even the pretty ones." Leo blinks.

Karai smiles, a real smile, not a smirk, and it scares him a lot more than a smirk would. "You like it, don't you? Being called pretty. I bet no one's ever called you that before, not even your rat daddy."

She straightens, adjusting her weight so it rests on his knees. "You think I'm pretty, don't you? Even though I've got fangs and claws and I try to kill you once a week. Fuck, maybe you like me _because_ of that." She cocks her head. "I wonder...."

And before Leo can ask her what she wonders, or try to tell her about the mind control device in her head again, she reaches up and unbuckles the top half of her armor, tossing it away.

Just. Like. That.

Leo's brain collapses under itself under the weight of dark pink nipples and impossibly soft curves, of the perfect muscles and the Foot tattoo over her right breast (God, he envies whoever got to do that so much), but all of that passes through his mind in a second when he registers the _bruises._

They swirl up over her torso in a hideous rainbow, mottled in so many more colors than he's seen on his and his brother's skin. They're mostly gathered around her hips and breasts--wait, are her nipples _supposed_ to be that color?--before disappearing into the scales that start at her waist, and he winces at the implications. No one gets those bruises in training.

Some of the bruises are clear enough that he can make out the imprint of the hand that left them: a human one, with five muscular fingers. There's only one man who'd dare touch Karai this way.

She--there'd been no sign of her being in pain tonight, he's _trained_ to notice such things. But she had to be feeling _this_...so what if the reason he hadn't seen anything was that she moved like that often enough for him not to tell the difference? What if her body had looked like long before the brain worm, back when they were still frenemies, when he'd fantasized about what was underneath that armor on a regular basis?

Karai smiles the kind of smile that belongs to heroin addicts at their crest of their high and people sentenced to death. "Do you still think I'm pretty, Hamato Leonardo?" And she is, God, she _is._

Part of his brain is horrified at what he's seeing, part is still terrified that the only reason she'd have to show him this is that she's planning to eat his heart afterwards, and a large, useless part of it is still screaming _tits tits tits_ at a rather irritating volume as something between his legs throbs painfully hot.

He forces himself to pull together and speak. "How...how many times has he done that?"

"Funny," Karai says. "You say that like you care."

"I _do_ care. Karai, even if you think he's your father, he can't _do_ that to you. It's not _right."_ He drags his gaze away from her torso before it either fries his brain again or makes him vomit.

"Right? Monsters don't get to choose right or wrong. You should know that as well as I."

"You're not a monster," Leo says firmly. "Neither am I. And you _don't deserve this."_

"Are you sure?" And before he can think of an answer she bends over him, low and sinuous, and brushes her breasts along his chest. Leo lets out a strangled squeak, hands flexing wildly in the restraints, not sure if he wants to escape or touch her back.

"If I wasn't a monster, I'd let you run," Karai murmurs in his ear. "I'd let you go back home to your freakshow family and jerk off about this and cry about the _poor little victim."_ She presses herself between his legs, scales cool against his hot slit, and Leo gasps.

"You make such interesting noises." Karai muses, laying her head on her chest. "Like a little girl." She grinds against him and Leo sucks in a breath, trying to focus, because it feels so good and his hands are shaking and _he doesn't know what's going on._

"I ate a little girl once," she says. "The Kraang had shot her when she was trying to run away and she was lying there in the street and I was so _hungry._ Do you know what it's like to be hungry, little monster?"

"Yes," Leo grits out, trying to ground himself. He knows. He grew up underground, scavenging dogs and garbage and algae, with three younger siblings who had to eat before he could and a father who didn't have anything close to a sustainable income. Hunger was par for the course.

He thinks he can see hunger in Karai's eyes, but it's a strange, unfamiliar kind of hunger.

She lifts her head so that their faces are inches apart, green burning into blue. "Monsters are meant to be broken, to be _ruled_ ," she says. "That's what Daddy taught me, and he's always right."

Then she kisses him. It's everything he ever dreamed of, sweet and fierce and vicious, but he can't focus on that as her tongue shoves down her throat; too long, too fast, he can't _breathe_. The roof of his mouth is on fire and his esophagus is being scraped raw and the whole time she's pressing against him, her body perfectly molding to his.

Karai pulls back, leaving him sputtering and choking. "Monsters are meant to be ruled, but you haven't got the message yet, have you? Despite Daddy's best efforts." She brushes his bad knee with her tail tip and Leo winces. "So it's up to me to teach you, instead. The way Daddy taught _me."_

"This--this isn't you, Karai," Leo gasps. He has to believe this. Pre-worm Karai was harsh, yes, even brutal, but not like this, not _cruel._

But Karai just smiles. "Are you so sure? No one knows me, little monster. Not even me."

Her body curves in on itself and then all of a sudden her head is between his legs, impossible tongue digging into his bulging slit while her lips rub against his slit.

"FUCK!" Leo screams, feet pounding on the concrete as pleasure burns through him like a lightning bolt. He tries to sit up, push her away or pull her close or _something_ , but the snake around his wrists pulls even tighter and the one at his throat presses down, forcing his head back. The stars glitter overhead, painfully bright and offering no help.

"What'sssss wrong, little monsssster?" asks the snake at his throat.

_Oh. Oh shit._

"Cool trick, right?" the snake says in _Karai's voice_ , even though Karai's head is still bobbing between his legs. And it would be a cool trick, Leo has to admit, if Karai wasn't showing it off in the worst scenario possibly.

Her kisses and laps become more impatient. "Come on out," says the snake. "You know you want to." And he does, oh he _does,_ but not now, not when Karai isn't in her right mind and _he_ might not be either.

Keeping it in hurts so bad, though, and the effort leaves him shaking all over. He tries to breathe, to lose himself, but his much-vaunted meditation skills are worth jack shit right now. "Let me go," he says, begging now. "We can talk about this, I..." 

"Monssssterssss don't get time," the two snakes say, their voice babbling in a mad chorus. "Monssssstersssss don't get choices." Karai's human head lets out a soft of hum of agreement between his legs, and the vibration breaks the last of his self-control. Leo emerges with a groan of mingled frustration and relief, tail _thwapping_ against his leg like a goddamn dog.

She swallows him and the world goes white. "You tasssssste nice," a snake hisses in his ear. "Ssssssweeter than Daddy, even though he'sssss bigger." A small, crazy part of Leo takes offense at that and another, equally crazy part of him feels proud, while the rest shatters under the voices screaming _kill her kill her kill her_ and _feels good feels good feels good_.

All too quickly he's completely hard and he hopes that maybe she'll suck him off and leave it at that, content herself with finding only one way to humiliate him. Instead she pulls back with a sigh, and Leo's hips jerk against his will, his body all too desperate for more. He hisses at himself, digging his fingers into his palms.

Karai smiles at him, face slick with pre-cum and...are those tears? "Hurts, doesn't it?" she asks. "To need someone that badly, and know it's only because they _made_ you need it."

Her lower frame ripples, tail shifting to human, and he sees she's naked from the waist down. More bruises decorate her thighs, calves, marching into the dark triangle of hair between her legs....he squeezes his eyes shut, breathing hard, and she laughs.

Leo flexes his still-shaking legs, preparing to unbalance her now that her weight's been reduced, but the fangs are pressing back into his throat, sending a trickle of blood down his neck. "Don't fight," Karai whispers, voice soft. "Fighting is for later. Hating is for later. Right now, this is just me breaking you, little monster."

"My name is Leo," he whispers, feeling the fangs slice just a bit deeper. "Not little monster. You _know_ that. You know this is _wrong."_

"Wrong?" The snake head laps up his blood, tongue tickling his skin. "What does that have to do with anything?"

She sounds insane, he thinks. And he must be crazy, too, because something inside him wants her to keep talking and talking and never stop.

"Open your eyes," Karai says. "Or I'll tear your lids off." He does, just as she leans down and kisses him with no tongue this time. It's very soft and gentle, very cruel.

It's gentle when she lowers herself onto him, too, even though his arms are still throbbing from how tightly she's holding on. Leo lets out a soft moan and Karai replies with one of her own, the sound echoing through his mouth. It's warm and wet and _awful_ and....amazing.

"The next time Daddy fucks me, I'll think of you," Karai says, her hips flush with his. "And if anyone ever wants to fuck you, you'll think of me."

She starts to move then, and then everything breaks down into _don't so good skin flesh sound skin._

Leo thrashes even more--to fight her, to hold her, but all he gets for his efforts is the distant sensation of blood trickling down his wrists and Karai's appreciate hum at his bucking hips. He opens his mouth to scream, to protest, but all that comes out is a string of babbling churrs. 

Karai presses her breasts to his plastron again, pulls him so close, and he can't _breathe_ and he can't _think._ Leo can smell sweat and shampoo in her hair, feel her skin flicker from scales to flesh like a heartbeat, see a green inferno reflected in her eyes. His brothers could be standing right there and he wouldn't be able to hear over the sound of her gasps and moans.

Logically, he knows he's too inexperienced for it to last long, but it feels like years before he comes, shaking them both with the vibrations. Karai follows a few seconds later, screaming--she screams _his_ name, his real name, and he suddenly wishes she'd kept calling him little monster.

They ride out the last few shudders together and then she slumps down, pressing one last kiss to his mouth. Then she's rolling off of him and folding herself into his side, her tail wrapping around them in a soft white ring. Her head settles in the crook of his neck and her arm flops across his chest, the way he imagined so many times.

"You did good, lover," she murmurs. "Good for a little monster, anyway."

Leo doesn't respond, can't. He just stares at the night sky for awhile, feeling sated and used, pleasured and violated. His mind is a blank grey space.

Than he realizes she's not holding his hands anymore.

He rolls around and staggers to his feet, tucking himself back in, wincing at the feel of his own warm, sticky flesh. He grabs for his swords and wrappings and blades, frantically trying to put himself back together.

When he whirls around, sword raised, he expects to see Karai on her feet again, but she's still lying naked on her back, eyes blank behind a curtain of messy hair.

"Well?" she asks. "Are you going to do it or not?" She throws her arms wide

Leo freezes, trying to remember how to speak. "Do...do you want me to?" He realizes that the blade is shaking in his hand, and that his shock and fear is run through with threads of anger. "Is _that_ why you did....this?"

She shrugs, bare skin rustling against stone, the bruises even more jarring from this angle. "I was curious, I guess. I wanted to see what you would do, once you found out what a big bad monster I was. If you'd stop trying to _save_ me." She looks him up and down carefully. "Or would you prefer to use it on yourself?"

He wants to. For a brief, terrible moment, he wants to. But he can't, any more than he can use it on her.

Karai shifts, making herself comfortable on the roof. "If we make a baby I'll get rid of it, just in case you're worried." A _baby._ Fuck, he hasn't even considered the possibility. And what if she's sick? What if Shredder's given her something? What if _he's_ somehow given her some mutant disease?

"Or..." Karai props herself up on her elbows, chewing her lip in thought. "Perhaps I'll take one of your brothers next. Would that tip you over the edge?"

He can't breathe. He can't _breathe._ She wouldn't....but she would, wouldn't she? Because it's not _her_ , not Karai, just a dark ugly thing wearing her skin. He believes this. He _has_ to believe this. If he didn't, she'd already be already be dead.

"Try to touch them, and I'll kill you," he says, his voice only shaking a little. "Cure or no cure."

Karai blinks. "You know, I believe you. I guess my question is...." She runs a hand up her smooth thigh. "If I tried to do this to you again, would you kill me to save _yourself_? Or would you submit, like a good, _loving_ little monster?"

Leo's hand seems to move on its own, grabbing a grenade from his belt, and he's barely registered the flash of smoke when he realizes that he's already running away, tearing across the dark rooftops.

In the distance, he thinks he can hear her laughing.

Leo scrubs away tears and other things in the shower at home, hissing as the hot water brushes his wounds. His wrists will be mottled tomorrow, but the wrappings should cover them pretty well (whenever he takes them off, he'll think of her). The cut on his neck isn't that noticeable, even with the band-aid and if anyone asks he say it's just from training; it doesn't look remotely like a hickey, after all.

He makes plans to force everybody to go out on pairs, to keep a closer eye on his brother than ever and stop them from sneaking out alone, to do everything he can in case Karai wants to carry out her threat ~~except tell them about what the actual threat~~. He tells himself that he and Karai will be fine, disease wise, considering how hardy mutant bodies are (if he has to go to Donnie with an infection he might actually commit seppuku).

Leo stands in front of the mirror and looks at himself for a few seconds, trying not to feel. Then he feels, and can't stop feeling. He barely makes it to the toilet in time to throw up and has to stay there for what feels like ten minutes, until the shaking dies down.

Afterwards, he lies under the covers in his room, head and limbs tucked back into his shell. He used to go to bed that way a lot when he was little, when he was trying to hide from the terrors he was sure lurked in the sewer tunnels (his father didn't tell them until later that all the real terrors were aboveground).

He doesn't think about how hiding in his shell like this still leaves his private parts relatively unprotected, doesn't think about her following him home. He doesn't think about sickening green eyes or the smell he prays he's completely scrubbed off or _why the fuck did it have to feel so good_ _?_

And he _definitely_ doesn't think about the answer to Karai's question, the answer he might have given in an attempt to avoid answering at all.

Because he understands, now, why Karai stayed with Saki for so long. He understands what it's like to love someone even after they've done something terrible to you (but it wasn't her, it was the brain worm, please please let it just be the brain worm). He understands what it's like to remember suffering and fury and shame and fear, and not be able to forget affection and compassion and hope.

Leo tries to soothe himself with the fact that Raph's memories of his time with the brain worm are blurry. If it's the same for Karai, than she won't even remember what she did to him in her altered state, won't have to carry the guilt.

He'll ~~have to~~ be able to deal with this on his own, then. His brothers would destroy Karai if they found out, and it would break Splinter's heart. He can make himself forget, and he can keep the ugly, traitorous parts of his body from wondering about a repeat performance, at least until Karai is better (or until the idea of touching her doesn't make his heart skip a beat for all the wrong reasons).

He can handle this, Leo tells himself, pulling himself even more tightly into his shell so the faint tremors will stop. He can. He will.

Everything is going to be just _fine_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In real life, when someone hurts you, you have to stay away from them. No matter how much it hurts.


	28. Alarm Bell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Karai and Leo prepare to wake up. Sequel to "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?"

Karai's the first one to smell it. Leo sees her nostrils flare a second before the scent hit his nose--the first thing he remembers smelling since blood and his own fear. It's the distinct aroma of something burning.

f follow it through the winding streets and eventually find themselves scaling another roof. Together they peer across the skyline and see the small, bright flicker of flames in the distance.

It's the strangest feeling, to watch this dream-city burn. There are no firetrucks, no ambulances, no screaming in the empty streets or helicopters peering down from above. There's just the fire being pulled up over the city like a colorful blanket, warm and bright and inevitable.

Still, it's... "Scary," Leo admits, hugging himself. Karai reaches for his hand and he squeezes hers gratefully.

"How long have we been here?" she asks.

Leo shrugs. "I don't know. Didn't feel that long." Although for all he knows it could have been _years_ since his last blurry members of pain and cold tile and his brother's voices. He shoves the thought away, chewing his lip.

 _You should have gone back earlier,_ a voice whispers in his head, cruel and chiding. _You left them when they needed you most._

"They needed you to get _better,"_ Karai says offhandedly. "There's no reason to beat yourself up again." He glances at her and she shrugs. "What? I'm just taking advantage of the last few minutes of having our brains tangled up like spaghetti."

Leo groans at the mental image, and Karai's cut off mid-snicker as a building crumbles in the distance. Her hand tightens in Leo's, squeezing painfully tight, but he's more concerned with the way she's staring off at the fire, her eyes big in a way he hasn't seem them since she found out who she was.

"You okay?" he asks, already suspecting the answer.

"I don't remember a lot about the fire," she says, voice distant. "My fa--Saki, he never told me much about it. But I...I remember crying when I got a sunburn, and throwing up all over my nurse when I imagined something a thousand times more painful happening to my mommy. And I remember how he caught me looking at pictures of burned victims once and he was so mad..."

She shivers, just a little. Memories of _fear pain anger guilt confusion tears_ pulse through their linked fingers, and Leo winces.

"I'm sorry," he says, knowing that's too little and also not able to think of anything better to say. Master Splinter had never talked about the fire in detail, never talked about what it felt like to wake up outside the ashes of one's home and know--or think--that the people you loved most were inside.

"Sometimes I dreamed about noise," she says, and he knows exactly which fire she's referring to. "Things screaming and breaking and....I don't know, just noise, and a lot of it. I'd wake up with my head ringing, and I'd calm myself down by meditating and fantasizing about killing Hamato Yoshi." She says the last part unapologetically, but there's a slight tremble in her hand.

Leo squeezes back, offering quiet forgiveness. "It's not your fault," he murmurs, and Karai lays her head on his shoulder, hair tickling his scales and skirt brushing his legs.

The fire draws closer, and he winces as more buildings vanish into the cloud of smoke. Leo shivers at the sight, until he has to look away

"You know," he says, gazing out over the undamaged parts of the city. "When I was a kid I had this image of New York as some sort of sci-fi city, with flying cars and holographs everywhere and aliens--people--walking around wrapped in tinfoil or something. Stupid stuff, but I think I was falling in love with it even before I went topside."

"It's an easy city to love," Karai replies. "Reminds me of Tokyo. Maybe one day I'll take you guys there." She straighten up and smiles at him, quick and sharp. "We can use one of Saki's private planes, after we've finished dancing on his grave."

"I've always wanted to fly," Leo admits. He's lost count of the nights he spends peering up through sewer grates at the sky, bugging Donnie or Splinter until they told him more about the constellations, daydreaming about what it would be like to defy gravity. When he was very small he used to fantasize about his shell breaking open to form dragon wings, about being able to soar up there with the birds.

He would like to soar with Karai, one day. If his wings formed from his shell, hers would be made of razor-edged silver feathers, able to cut and caress in equal measure.

Leo tells her that, because it's the sort of thing you can really only say in a burning dream, and she grins, the firelight flaring in her dark eyes.

The fire is picking up now, even though there isn't that much wind. It roll towards them like a tidal wave, bright and hungry, and they both find themlsevvs backing up. When it roars, Leo hears the howl of icy wind and the whine of arrows, and he winces.

"You're scared," Karai says. It's not a question.

"And you're not?" Scared of Shredder, scared of coming back dead, scared that the fire really has engulfed the city or worse, scared that Karai will be an animal that Leo will never walk again, scared of forgetting whatever they've had here. They understand these fears without needing to discuss them.

Karai shrugs, nods, glances at her feet. "There's not really much point in being scared...but you're right. I am."

"I'll remember what you taught me," Leo says. "I'll remember how to chase you, if nothing else." _And how to love you,_ he thinks, although he doesn't dare say it aloud, and Karai doesn't dare acknowledge it.

He leans in and their lips touch, soft at first, then hungry to the point of desperate. Karai tastes of steel and rain, and Leo thinks he might not mind tasting her for the rest of his life.

They pull away and she murmurs, "If I'm alive, I'm gonna wake up alone. So you better come find me quick, Blue."

"I'll try," he says. In the end, that's all it can do.

A blast of heat hits their faces and Karai's breath catches, pulling away to glance back at the fire. It's close now, only a few streets away and painfully bright to look at. Her face is calm, but Leo can feel the pulse skipping in her wrist.

"I don't want to burn," she admits. "I....I know it's not real, but I don't want to burn."

"Me neither," Leo admits, looking down at the street directly below them. It's darker than it should be on this sunny day, black and featureless like a hungry mouth--or the welcoming shadows of a manhole cover. "We don't have to, though, do we?"

She follows his gaze. "You sure about that?"

"Yeah." This, he believe whole-heartedly. He's not sure when he became the kind of person who'd jump into an abyss for Oroku Karai--Hamato Miwa, whatever she wants to call herself--but he is, and that's one thing he'll never be able to forget.

Karai nods, her face relaxing into resolve. "On three, then."

"One." He takes a good long look at her, drinking in her face. He'll probably never know how much of this was real, but Karai herself is real, and he wants to take her with him into whatever lies ahead.

"Two." There are scales starting to flow over her skin, flashing gloriously in the firelight. He reaches out to stroke them, and she leans into the touch for a second, before they both turn away and face the edge again.

"Three." They leap.

He's falling, falling, falling...Karai's hand tight in his, keeping him from spinning away. He thinks she says, "See you on the other side."

They hit the shadows a moment before the flame reaches them.

Then he's gasping awake in a tub, with nothing left from three months except the memory of a strong, precious hand in his.


End file.
